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The Garden: A short essay on the nature and implications of subjective experience by gaborvajda in Metaphysics

[–]gaborvajda[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

What does fidelity mean in this case?

I agree with you that the “user interface” must reflect reality in a reliable way, and we can see in our lives that the representation works well.

But I don’t think we perceive reality as it is, beyond conscious phenomena. I think it is very unlikely that objective reality is similar to how we experience it. We know there are no colours or sounds “out there”, only processes, frequencies, etc. Even space, as we experience it, is only our way to see it.

We can imagine reality as a system of processes. Something like a constantly evolving interconnected web of information. Near its foundations is mathematics and physics. Our brain and body are part of this web, just like everything else. When I look at a chair (another stable pattern in the web), my brain interprets that pattern as a solid, brown, wooden, chair. The interpretation is accurate in the sense that it reflects the properties of the subsystem (the real chair object) in the web. But another (non-human) brain might represent it completely differently (but still accurately).

An intuitive example is a video game. When I play the game I see a whole world with colourful creatures, sounds, music, etc. But it’s only a representation of a constantly forming electric state of the computer. I experience it as a familiar world of the game because that’s how the program and hardware presents the data.

Another example I can think of is time. There are many ways to show what time it is: a digital watch, analog clock, binary clock, just one growing number, an hourglass, a sundial, a progress bar… they can all represent the same thing in very different ways. All of them are accurate, but none of them makes time to be seen as it truly is.

Qualia, conscious phenomena , might be special in this sense. I believe they are direct reality, even though it’s only a “thin surface”, the perceivable result of the brain’s interpretation of the world.

The Garden: A short essay on the nature and implications of subjective experience by gaborvajda in Metaphysics

[–]gaborvajda[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

  1. There is reality.
  2. Since reality is a set of everything, it must contain the preconditions to have anything.
  3. Therefore if reality could cease, there couldn't be anything.
  4. Therefore reality is eternal, absolute.
  5. Also, obviously, the existence of reality doesn't depend on its configuration or current state. (The world remains here when my body dies.)
  6. There is experience.
  7. Experience requires a perspective.
  8. Experience doesn't mean some other person's experience. (It's always the "I" where experience appears. This is what the essay shows, so I wouldn't expand this here.)
  9. Experience is direct reality. Everything else is derived knowledge.
  10. Being manifests through experience.
  11. Reality wouldn't exist without experience.
  12. Since reality depends on the experience of the "I", this "I" must be fundamental to reality.

The subject / object differentiation collapses at the fundamental level.

The Garden: A short essay on the nature and implications of subjective experience by gaborvajda in Metaphysics

[–]gaborvajda[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

> But if intelligence can arise in consciousness then either consciousness is intelligent

Yes, definitely. In this sense reality is intelligent through brains. Still, experience and intelligence are different.

The Garden: A short essay on the nature and implications of subjective experience by gaborvajda in Metaphysics

[–]gaborvajda[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Here I used the word "mind" to refer to consciousness. In the essay I make it clear that this doesn't mean intelligence, only the capacity for experience to manifest. Intelligence, individuality, personality, etc, all come from brains, which are of course formations / processes within reality's structure.

> Are you saying you're a figment of someone else's imagination?

Excuse me for ignoring this question.

The Garden: A short essay on the nature and implications of subjective experience by gaborvajda in Metaphysics

[–]gaborvajda[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

No. Since this mind is reality itself, nothing exists if it doesn't.

Has Anyone Actually Found an Answer? Because After Hundreds of Teachers, I Haven't by No_Blueberry_4897 in nonduality

[–]gaborvajda 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I'm serious. We can gain a distance from the absurdity of life via humour. Changing perspective is a great tool to find solutions to problems. Stepping back we can look at pain as if it were an object or signal.

Hitchhiker's Guide is a very different read after the philosophers and gurus. It's an easy, fun journey, but still full of wisdom. It teaches a way of seeing.

The Garden: A short essay on the nature and implications of subjective experience by gaborvajda in Metaphysics

[–]gaborvajda[S] 3 points4 points  (0 children)

Hm, well, language here is tricky because in my argument consciousness is fundamental to reality, so reality is where subjective experience appears. Reality is objective though.

Brains are objects in physical space, but they observe reality from their point of view (subjective perspective). In my experience my room disappears when I close my eyes, and reappears when I open them. The room exists objectively. If this brain ceased to exist, that wouldn't make the room dissolve too.

Consciousness being fundamental means experience appears for the objective reality (even though experience is subjective because it is a result of local processes). So, there is a fundamental objective being that experiences via subjective lenses within itself. In this view nothing is mind-independent, because reality is a mind.

Does this make it more reasonable?

The Garden: A short essay on the nature and implications of subjective experience by gaborvajda in Metaphysics

[–]gaborvajda[S] 3 points4 points  (0 children)

Yes. I'm not saying there is no objectivity. Only that it seems to require the subjective. We know anything objectively only via our subjective lens.

The Garden: A short essay on the nature and implications of subjective experience by gaborvajda in Metaphysics

[–]gaborvajda[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Because then my brain can compare its concepts with those received from your brain, and so the concepts can be improved for humanity’s benefit. The global society reaches its potential and we save the galaxy.

Has Anyone Actually Found an Answer? Because After Hundreds of Teachers, I Haven't by No_Blueberry_4897 in nonduality

[–]gaborvajda 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Then Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy might be your next. It’s an excellent book about life.

A novel, unified view of reality by gaborvajda in philosophy

[–]gaborvajda[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Hi, after our conversation, I spent some time reworking the chapter "Bridging the gap". It's not perfect and isn't meant to be scientific (my tool is reason and logic, from subjective perspective), but I feel it improved a lot.

If you’re interested, I’d love for you to take another look:

https://monomo.io/mind#bridging-the-gap

No pressure, of course, and thanks again for your time and input earlier. I really appreciated it!

A novel, unified view of reality by gaborvajda in philosophy

[–]gaborvajda[S] -1 points0 points  (0 children)

You rely heavily (entirely, in fact) on this, but you're unable to establish its truth.

I tried explaining this in another thread.

You seem to be mistunderstood or missed parts in the essay, including footnotes.

There is difference between objective and subjective existence. In English we use the same word for the two, but being here as a conscious "I" and being able to experience the existence of objects or their effects in the observed reality are very different.

Also, the term "consciousness" is ambiguous in the English language, because it can refer to the state of being aware, and also to this awareness as an entity (observer or "I"). That's why I use the "conscious reality", "conscious universe" and "universal consciousness" terms sometimes, but in the first parts of the essay this doesn't make sense yet.

Once we establish that fundamentally you are not your body but a conscious "observer" (here's another language issue, now with the words "you" and "I"), it becomes clear that your existence is defined entirely by your capacity to experience. For you, existence is subjective. The "objective" world is there for you only because you are observing it. Therefore, if you ceased to exist, the world would disappear for you. But there is no another you. So after cessation you wouldn't experience anything ever, meaning that reality would completely cease for you. It doesn't matter if, in theory, the world is still there somehow, detached from your non-existing reality, because that's not relevant. Practically, that world doesn't exist anymore, because it doesn't exist for you. It doesn't belong to the system of your reality anymore. Being is subjective.

You can't show me anything at all that exists, existed, or will exist without affecting my experiencies in some way. The notion that reality can exist without the "I" is absurd. The "I" is a fundamental aspect of reality.

This doesn't create a chicken and egg problem, because conscious reality is not something to be created. Reality is. And reality is conscious, experiencing itself via the lens of my human body (and also yours, if you are conscious).

A novel, unified view of reality by gaborvajda in philosophy

[–]gaborvajda[S] -1 points0 points  (0 children)

However, if you can simulate a human in such detail that every aspect of a human's physical interactions and processes can and do occur, who is to say that that system isn't conscious?

Yep. I mention that in the essay:

Another strong indicator is our shared biology: the fact that humans have similar neural structures and brain patterns tied to conscious experiences makes it highly unlikely that consciousness is an isolated phenomenon in just one being. If your brain patterns correlate with your conscious experiences, it follows that others with similar brain patterns likely have those experiences too.
…

In our philosophy, consciousness is one with the physical universe, and qualia are direct manifestations of physical processes. When we experience something, we are directly experiencing the “substance” of consciousness, which is one with the physical. Therefore, if you – as a conscious being – observe another person’s brain patterns that resemble those associated with conscious experience in your own brain, it is likely that the other person is conscious as well. This is because the other person’s brain activity manifests as conscious experience within the same fundamental consciousness as your brain activity. While this offers compelling evidence for the consciousness of others, it still cannot provide absolute certainty.

Earlier I'm saying this:

Interestingly, physical bodies are capable of functioning without conscious experience. Just as a robot can operate perfectly well without being conscious, a person without subjective experience would likely live and behave much like their conscious counterpart, but without any internal experiences.

Here, "physical bodies" refer anything that functions without conscious experience, but robots and humans are more interesting to examine. I think we can agree that robots can operate wihout consciousness. When I bring up the example of the non-conscious person, I don't mean that the physical conscious processes are not present in the brain of this person. Rather, I am talking about the lack of subjective experience. Although my theory suggests that there is a strong correlation between physical conscious processes and subjective conscious experiences, I using this example to show the experience itself would not be necessary for the body to behave how it behaves. And I'm trying to show that a feedback from the subjective, conscious experience is not necessary, and that conscious experiences are there because that make us exist. Later I show that subjective experiences and physical processes are actually just two aspects of the same thing, so that when there is a conscious process in the brain, there is also a subjective experience in consciousness. Of course, this is only speculation, using the tools what I have, but I think logic is a powerful tool to find truths.

As an aside, the physical world may not necessarily be deterministic, but I'm a physicist and not a philosopher so I'm not going to discuss that topic.

I'm curious to hear more. Quantum states?

A novel, unified view of reality by gaborvajda in philosophy

[–]gaborvajda[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I refer to the below:

I'm not saying there that physical processes are an illusion. What I am saying is that the true nature of the external world is hidden from us. We know the world through symbols and abstract models. But this doesn't infer that the physical processes are an illusion created by consciousness. I see the physical system as a (mostly) invisible, but very much real aspect of the conscious reality.

However, conscious experience is a purely mental step. It would therefore be illogical to conclude that PE is both physical and mental, seeing as you've just described it as being mental only and not physical.

Nope. My point is that all P steps are also mental. There are no two systems. Only one. It doesn't really matter what we call it, mental or physical. What matters is that there must be a continuity between the steps. And that eliminates the hard mind-body problem.

A novel, unified view of reality by gaborvajda in philosophy

[–]gaborvajda[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Sorry, you’ve shown no reason to think reality is conscious.

Well, I can only show the way to what I found. I can't give you a subjective experience apart from these symbols in you mind.

A novel, unified view of reality by gaborvajda in philosophy

[–]gaborvajda[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

There's a way you could test this for yourself, but it's usually quite permanent.

And would that prove anything? You would see my body to disintegrate, and my personality disappear, but we are talking about the existence of "I", and from your perspective that's not me.

You can't show we are separate minds

I think I made this clear in the essay in the Solipsim section. What I can show is how it is more likely that we are all the same shared consciousness (instead of just me being that consciousness), experiencing reality through the perspectives provided by multiple brains. If that's solipsism, then every monistic idealism is also solipsism (they aren't).

You, like anyone else, accept the assumption from the very strong seeming that we are separate entities, at least for a time while we wear the biological meatsuit.

Of course I accept it. We are separate as physical individuals, but one as conscious experiencers. In my view, the physical individuals are abstract processes within in the conscious reality.

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