Is the world a hallucination?

[selamlar]

Reading a Max_Freakout thread really is like inadvertantly stumbling into the presence of a 13 year old boy who has just finshed reading the Celestine Prophecy and, having carefully replaced his normal lightbulb with a red-tinted one, is now smoking his first joint and listening to the Doors.

 

[jonH]

But trips make me laugh

 

[ebay sex moomin]

It's a prison for your mind

 

[jonH]

You Got To Get Into To Get Out Of It

 

[d.a.s.h]

my visual cortex, is presenting to my awareness a visual representation of a screen, what is being represented by this representation?

Does it represent something which isnt itself?

Re. your second question, I am not sure what there is to be discovered in seeking an answer to that. There is no necessary correspondence at all between the form of a symbol or representation and the thing it represents. For symbols to be useful, they just need to be consistently related to the things they represent.

As for what the 'really real world' is ultimately comprised of, this doesn't have much importance for the psychology of perception, imo. If you're a materialist, it's made up of particles, fields, forces etc. If you're an idealist, everything might be thoughts in the mind of God.

It doesn't really matter. I'm just glad I have a visual system which won't suddenly decide for laughs to make speeding cars look like floating marshmallows, or rotten food look edible.

 

[nosos]

Reading a Max_Freakout thread really is like inadvertantly stumbling into the presence of a 13 year old boy who has just finshed reading the Celestine Prophecy and, having carefully replaced his normal lightbulb with a red-tinted one, is now smoking his first joint and listening to the Doors.

Awesome post!

 

[nosos]

I still don't believe Max got a first from KCL

 

[Dillinger4]

.

 

[nosos]

Its a FALSE DILEMMA.

Exactly. Once you recognise the fact we're embodied beings living in the world the representationalist assumptions Cartesian epistemology was founded on become utterly redundant and questions like that posed on this thread seem absurd.

 

[Dillinger4]

Me either. I can't believe he did a full philosophy degree and still not manage to grasp any philosophical concepts at all.

 

[Dillinger4]

Exactly. Once you recognise the fact we're embodied beings living in the world the representationalist assumptions Cartesian epistemology was founded on become utterly redundant and questions like that posed on this thread seem absurd.

Yep.

 

[nosos]

Clearly he has "thoroughly read and studied all of these people"

 

[Dillinger4]

He said he wrote his dissertation on The Cogito.

 

[bluestreak]

how can you say that?!

I waved my arms and that just appeared. just like in the real world.

 

[erasmus]

seeing is a constructive process. optical illusions demonstrate this

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fraser_spiral_illusion

 

[butchersapron]

Even i can't be bothered with this one.

 

[bluestreak]

seeing is a constructive process. optical illusions demonstrate this

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fraser_spiral_illusion

Constructive? Que?

 

[Dillinger4]

seeing is a constructive process. optical illusions demonstrate this

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fraser_spiral_illusion

Merleau-Ponty talks about optical illusions as well (although I cant quite remember what he says off the top of my head). I think he uses them to demonstrate the ambiguous nature of reality.

I have stop mentioning Merleau-Ponty! I have just finished my last ever philosophy module and essay on him, you see.

He has all the answers.

 

[max_freakout]

I still don't believe Max got a first from KCL

i didnt get a first!!!! I never said i did, i got a 2:1 like most normal people

i did get a few firsts in essays though..... and im going back to KCL next year

 

[max_freakout]

Re. your second question, I am not sure what there is to be discovered in seeking an answer to that. There is no necessary correspondence at all between the form of a symbol or representation and the thing it represents. For symbols to be useful, they just need to be consistently related to the things they represent.

As for what the 'really real world' is ultimately comprised of, this doesn't have much importance for the psychology of perception, imo. If you're a materialist, it's made up of particles, fields, forces etc. If you're an idealist, everything might be thoughts in the mind of God.

It doesn't really matter. I'm just glad I have a visual system which won't suddenly decide for laughs to make speeding cars look like floating marshmallows, or rotten food look edible.

i agree with everything you say, but this seems to mean that the world IS in fact a hallucination, the representations could represent anything, or nothing, what matters is that they remain consistent

 

[max_freakout]

I have a variety of techniques myself. If you are being chased by a dragon-like phenomena, you are dreaming. If what you imagine shortly after happens then you are dreaming. If you gaze intently at a solid object and it dissolves away into another scene, you are dreaming.

Once you have established you are dreaming, you can take control; being in a lucid dream is quite unlike being-in-the-(real)-world.

Hope this helps

but since you ordinarily dont know your dreaming when you are, the dream world is completely convincing, even if it was a lucid dream, what is the difference between (for example) a person you encounter in a dream, and a real person? How can you tell the difference? is there a difference?

 

[CJohn]

i agree with everything you say, but this seems to mean that the world IS in fact a hallucination, the representations could represent anything, or nothing, what matters is that they remain consistent

But this is very similiar to what you said on the egodeath thread, which I also commented on. As far as I'm aware a hallucination suggests a false representation standing in place of, or concealing, some true form. The point being that there is nothing 'under' the representation, there is no true appearance hidden from sight, the 'truth' is the representation. With this in mind surely the whole notion of the world as a hallucination is meaningless. As dash says,

...It doesn't have to look the way it does. All the matters is that it consistently represents what it does.

...to which we might also add that there is a form of intersubjective agreement to what 'it' is representing. At least thats how I see it as a non-philosophy grad! What I'm getting it is that the 'hallucination' - i.e. the dominant inter-subjectively agreed upon representations ARE reality in the practical sense.

 

[revol68]

why have people been indulging this retard for 4 pages?

 

[Johnny Canuck3]

the ability to dream, shows that the mind has the capability of constructing completely convincing 3-dimensional hallucinatory realities

Didn't we just do this, three months ago?

I think there should be a mandatory 8 month interregnum between these brain twister threads.

 

[erasmus]

Constructive? Que?

constructive in the sense that we see a 3 dimensional array of objects sharply in space, all of which is constructed from two upside-down blurry flat images on our retina.

 

[Jonti]

why have people been indulging this retard for 4 pages?

I think it's more compassion than indulgence. Not that it makes it any easier to understand.

Most folks are content to acknowledge, "Well, this could all be an insane dream" and take that as a starting point. Given radical doubt, what is the world like? what is our relationship to it? that we nevertheless know in our being that we are real, and a part of something also real. The grasshoppers, sadly, think themselves clever to point to the incontestable fact of radical doubt; take it as a destination rather than a starting point; and worse, gibber helplessly while insisting that everyone should join them in their solipsist madness.

I recommend judicious use of the Ignore function. The grasshoppers are insisting they are not real, so it's only fair to ignore them.

 

[Jonti]

Constructive? Que?

Take a look at illusionworks -- or treat yourself to a copy of Al Seckel's Incredible Visual Illusions.

Mr Seckel explains "... it turns out that any one aspect of visual information, not just spatial, could have arisen from infinitely many different conditions ... if all visual stimuli are inherently ambiguous, how does the visual/perceptual system discard the infinite variety of possible conditions to settle on the correct interpretation almost all of the time, and in such a quick and efficient manner?"

 

[Dillinger4]

i agree with everything you say, but this seems to mean that the world IS in fact a hallucination, the representations could represent anything, or nothing, what matters is that they remain consistent

Nope. There are no representations.

 

[Dillinger4]

but since you ordinarily dont know your dreaming when you are, the dream world is completely convincing, even if it was a lucid dream, what is the difference between (for example) a person you encounter in a dream, and a real person? How can you tell the difference? is there a difference?

FFS, really.

 

[DotCommunist]

If it IS a hallucination, it's such a good one as to be indistinguishable from the real thing, and should therefore be treated as such.

no it isn't. Hallucinations should be full of WIN but real life has minimal WIN