Ask Lemmy

Even if it is an illusion created by the brain, does that make it any less existent?

The fact that there is word for this experience demonstrates that the experience itself objectively exists, which only serves to prove my point.

I have absolutely no idea why you are being so weird about this since obviously if the spring does not exist then it cannot be drunk from. However, what you are working bizarrely hard to go out of your way to miss is that, regardless of whether the spring itself exists in objective reality, the experience of seeing it has objective existence.

Phrased in a different way: if you see something that looks like a spring in the desert, then that might not mean that you will be able to drink from it, but you can be certain that, in that moment, you are seeing something that looks like a spring in the desert.

Does asking inane questions make you feel clever?

I think you need to work on your argument.

Edit: Actually, this is a teachable moment to illustrate my point: I highly suspect that you experiencing a feeling of being clever after deploying these non sequiturs is something that objectively exists, but that does not mean that you are objectively being clever.

Ah, so I am the one responsible for you “wasting [your] time”? That is an interesting transferal of agency on your part, but given that you are clearly waiting with baited breath for my response, here it is:

Yes, if you see a unicorn in the desert, then you might reasonably conclude that this is only because you just ate a particular cactus, given that unicorns aren’t objectively real, but that doesn’t make your experience of seeing it less objectively real. But seriously, are you next going to make me defend the objective existence of the book The Last Unicorn, given that unicorns aren’t real? (To save us from another back-and-forth: yes, the book does exist, so please don’t actually ask me this!)

Here, let me try a thought experiment that actually leads the discussion in a useful direction. Suppose you watched someone eat this very same cactus, after which they said, “Oh, whoa, there is a unicorn over there!” You might not consider it to be an objective fact that there actually is a unicorn over there, but I suspect that you probably would consider to be an objective fact that they are currently having the experience of seeing one. (And if the possibility that they could be lying is a problem for you, assume that the cactus was infused with truth serum.)

In fact, it is not hard to imagine a future where we have sufficiently advance neuroscience that we can detect what is in a person’s consciousness by monitoring how their neurons are firing and looking for particular patterns. In that case, you would not even have to rely on a self-report to observe the objective existence of the image of a unicorn popping into someone’s vision after they ate that cactus. Heck, you could use this device on your own brain and observe a device whose objective existence you believe in produce objectively real reports about what you are experiencing.

So experiences have objective existence, even if they do not refer to anything that objectively exists. (And, just to be clear, I am not arguing in favor of anything magical like a “soul”; I think that consciousness in the brain is just an approach that it uses to aggregate and share information amongst several subcomponents.)

And this leads us to the fundamental point that you keep willfully missing: your experience of the world might be lying to you in any number of ways, but by definition what it cannot be lying to you about is the fact that you are having an experience of the world, because if you were not having such an experience then you would not be able to make such an observation. Even if it were entirely a fiction created by your brain, it is nonetheless a fiction that exists.

Sorry, I overestimated the level of your reading comprehension. Let me offer you some help here, since you clearly need it. You will note that my comment said,

given that unicorns aren’t objectively real

and

given that unicorns aren’t real

so your question was directly and deliberately answered twice in the negative in the context of defending my overall position, which you outright claimed I was unwilling to do.

P.S.: Oh, sorry, I have probably still made things too complicated for your simplistic mind, haven’t I? Let me make it even simpler for you, since are so desperate for an answer, and for some reason you think I am authority on this subject: no, unicorns aren’t real.

Quoth my earlier comment:

obviously if the spring does not exist then it cannot be drunk from.

Congratulations, you have just quoted me saying that the spring might not be real, and the “might” is there because, if you are lucky, then you may very well have been fortunate enough to have come across an actual oasis in the distance rather than a mere mirage.

The second quote is your own fabrication and has nothing to do with anything I have argued because unicorns, unlike oases, are not even sometimes really there.

Yes, that word being mirage, which is so objectively real that you can take a photograph of it:

In contrast to a hallucination, a mirage is a real optical phenomenon that can be captured on camera, since light rays are actually refracted to form the false image at the observer’s location. What the image appears to represent, however, is determined by the interpretive faculties of the human mind. For example, inferior images on land are very easily mistaken for the reflections from a small body of water.

A “Unicorn” is not a kind of experience; seeing a mirage is. Hence, “word for this experience”.

I don’t doubt that someone, somewhere, has had the very real experience of seeing a hallucinated Unicorn while eating random cacti in the desert! It would be ironic if this experience ended up distracting them so much that they walked straight past the very real oasis they were searching for, resulting in a very real tragic death by dehydration.

Fantastic, this provides another teachable moment for you! 😀

My comment presented something called a hypothetical situation. It is an example of how particular circumstances can lead to a specific outcome. The key takeaway is that–and I recognize this can be confusing!–it does not make any claims outside the details contained within the hypothetical.

This answers both of your questions, but let me make it easy for you: I don’t, and because I made these circumstances be true in this hypothetical situation.

If your brain creates the illusion of a unicorn, then the presence of the illusion is real, even if the unicorn is not.

It is very telling that you are unable to respond directly to what I said. 😀

Once again, you prove yourself too cowardly to state your thought outright. 😉

Sure! What exactly do you think consciousness is (or is not)? You seem to think that I was motivated to enter this conversation in order to feel smart, but asked my original question because I was genuinely interested in your point of view.

Evidence suggests that “consciousness” is the mechanism that allows separate parts of the brain to communicate with other parts of the brain and coordinate activities. The hypothesis is this is done by the frontal cortex which is responsible for reasoning, decision making, and controlling voluntary movements. However, there is still much research required in Neurosciences before we have a solid theory and understanding of consciousness.

So in other words… it exists.

It is worth nothing that the first sentence is exactly my perspective, as I explicitly stated earlier:

I think that consciousness in the brain is just an approach that it uses to aggregate and share information amongst several subcomponents.

As I have demonstrated posting your entire side of the conversation, you never once stated what you are claiming in bold. If you did it would have satisfied my original question:

How do you know consciousness is “true” and not also an illusion created by the brain?

You have been acting in bad faith since point one when you answered my question with a question, then have the audacity to act like you have a point to make and I am somehow the ignoramus. Check the mirror for the latter, and come back when you actually have the prior because everything you have said is above, and all of that time could have been saved by answering the question with your own point of view instead of starting a fight with your nonsense.

Now Jog on and go play pretend intellectual with someone else.