[prmph]

Consciousness the the fundamental reality; it is the only thing we know for sure.

I know for sure what I am perceiving. Forget about if it is a simulation or not: it is still what I am perceiving. There is nothing else I can be sure of.

So you are correct that it is, in some sense, un-explorable. However, if the above is the reason, then nothing else is explorable also; you cannot prove that we are not in a simulation, and in a sense it does not matter.

If you accept that we assume we are not in a simulation and the knowledge we have matters, then consciousness is also open to exploration, and it is not only a philosophical thing. There are several hard questions about consciousness that are meaningful in this frame:

- Why do some things appear to be conscious and other not so?

- Is there only one consciousness in the universe, or multiple?

- Is consciousness local and embodied, or not?

- Would restoring the physical substrate of consciousness (if possible) lead to the same consciousness, or an identical one? Does this distinction between "same" and "identical" consciousnesses even make sense?

Etc

[mjburgess]

> Consciousness the the fundamental reality; it is the only thing we know for sure.

These statements conflate, as idealists do, epistemology and ontology.

What we know "for sure" has no bearing on what's real. These are entirely separate questions.

What an ape might, or might not, feel certain (or any which way about) says nothing about where an ape finds itself. Of course, this is a great injury to our ego, and sense of power to determine the nature of the world by our mind alone -- but such is life.

The world is not human, not at all like a human, and nothing about it follows from us at all. The world is not made in our image. Consciousness is a derivative, secondary phenomenon which is a measurement process occurring in the body of an ape, and whatever it manages to measure with any clarity, has no impact on the nature of that world.

[qsera]

>Consciousness is a derivative, secondary phenomenon which is a measurement process occurring in the body of an ape

Can you define existence without depending on or referring to consciousness?

[mjburgess]

Yes. Though i think you're committing the gentic fallacy here, which is the core fallacy at the heart of idealism and much 19th C. german philosophy.

The properties of the origin of somethign imply nothing about the properties of the product. That a bread factory is made of metal, does not mean bread is.

That in my statement of things in language I am conscious of what I state, says nothing about the truth (or other such properties) of what I say.

A photographic plate is made of metal, the mountain it photographs, of mud.

I am conscious, but when I say, "reality is all that which is extended in space and time" -- the truth of that proposition has nothing to do with my being consiouss -- it is a loaf of bread, a photograph, a product of a process invovling consiousness but in none of its properties, depends upon it.

Every relevant thing we do requires consciousness -- just as everythign a thermometer does requires, say, its own mercury -- but in measuring coffee's temperature, coffee is in no way mercury. And when we measre the world, by photographing it with consciousness, it is in no way conscious.

[qsera]

>reality is all that which is extended in space and time

You are missing the fact that "space" and "time" are also illusions painted on consciousness.

[mjburgess]

Alas, no I am not.

They're properties of the world which consciousness measures.

A mountain is painted in the ink of a photo, the mountain is not an illusion. You're focused only on the measurement, and not what is measured.

[qsera]

The point is that all existence is built on top of consciousness.

I understand your difficulty. It is hard to imagine the universe disappearing if all consciousness cease to exist the next second.

But is that really hard? Don't everything in your dreams disappear when you wake up?

Let me ask another question. Can you differentiate between a consciousness observing a universe, and a consciousness with a sensation of a whole universe, built in?

And the point of that is our subjective experiences only require consciousness, and not a universe that is independent of it.

[pegasus]

Why "alas"?

[alsetmusic]

> You are missing the fact that "space" and "time" are also illusions painted on consciousness.

Both of these can be measured. They are not illusions.

Money is an illusion made up by people and agreed upon for basically the whole of the world economy, but not real. Space between me and the lamp on my desk is very real. The age of the world and the age of the universe is very real.

[qsera]

Just like the sensation of hearing a voice is an illusion created by your brain from the vibrations in the air, the perception of depth is an illusion created from the parallax between your eyes. We seem to have an easy time understanding that sound is an illusion, but have a really hard time considering that space and time are similar illusions...They are just some number (like the number of vibrations) that the brain creates a perception for you.

That you can measure it does not change the fact.

>Money is an illusion

Money is a number. Brain does not create an illusion for money, at least not in the sense we are considering here.

[markhahn]

we need to distinguish accounts that are merely self-consistent, and those that are more useful.

the reality-is-illusion meme is self-consistent (panpsychism, simulationism, dream-of-god-ism, whatever). merely being self-consistent isn't good enough.

the alternative (and there is only one) is physicalism and its epistemology, science. the main appeal of this is parsimony, often referred to as Occam's Razor.

[qsera]

> those that are more useful.

Oh it is useful. It answers questions like "why do reality exist". "who created it", "What was before it"...Or may be I should say it does not really answer them but makes the questions irrelevant.

Just like how earth centric hypothesis posed questions like "Why is everything circling the earth and why is earth special", and heliocentric hypothesis made that irrelevant by proving that it is just an illusion caused by observing from the earth.

[king_geedorah]

Not good enough for whom exactly?

[prmph]

You are attributing to me something I never said.

I said nothing about the nature of reality. All that I said is: all my knowledge of the reality (whether it exists independently or me or not) comes from my perception.

There could be an objective reality, or reality could be something created by our consciousness. I don't know. The one thing I do know, however, is what my consciousness perceives. It is in that sense that is is fundamental

[summarybot]

Largely I find your points reductionist and insulting to the very sacred experience that is unfolding for you and me. Consciousness is a primary or even a priori phenomenon from which all of your surmisals stem. You have got it backwards. The fact someone once saw an ape, or saw a nebula, or made a measurement of brain waves, these all had to happen within human-experience. The experiencing itself is irreducible. Consciousness as a byproduct or secondary phenomenon as you claim, is to be expected for someone brought up in the modern era where religion and spirituality were so vehemently eschewed that men leaned too far into the other extreme and became physicalist-materialists claiming the lived experience is but a mere symphony of neurological interactions without consequence. This is a disastrous view. This is basically a swift ticket to a hell-realm. The basic posture is all wrong - you must return to the fundamental facts, namely those of your lived experience. What you claim as primary evidence are in fact secondary observations. And then you use the secondary observations to make claims about a primary nature "out there" and "distinct from" human-experiencing. This is simply not the case. This view is logically untenable. One does not study consciousness by looking at pictures and drawings and photos, just like how one does not study what music sounds like by inspecting the buttons of a saxaphone unblown. The fluid nature of the energetic capacity of mind is very difficult to discern - it's not an everyday occurence, sages spend their whole lives pursuing prayer and meditation in order to catch a mere glimpse at the primal nature of experience. Everything else flows from this. Your mind is the root of all things, it is the common denominator in all moments of your experience.

[mjburgess]

You can read my other comment. You're also committing the genetic fallacy.

Yes, a hand can measure itself. Yes, consciousness as a measurement process of reality can expose to the conscious agent that its own consciousness is a merely a process in the world.

Just as a camera, in photographing a mirror, discovers that it is only a camera located at some point in space and time.

The "back to basics" pov you're talkign about is one which actually abandons everything consciousness tells you about the world, because you're afraid of what you've found.

An ape without a mirror thinks, of course, it is god. What an insult to find the face of this god is only that of an ape.

[summarybot]

No, the genetic fallacy is not germane here. You are conflating the derivation of knowledge and direct knowing, which are distinct. You conflate the ingredients on the back of the label for the taste of the sweets in the pouch. The taste of sweetness is what I am indicating, not the list of ingredients. Also, you are suggesting that there is an impersonal objective spacetime irrespective of observer which is false. There is a generalized case that works for the figures projected for measuring the distances to solar bodies from other solar bodies. But you are basing your analysis on the hidden assumption that the material reality is first. This is an unchallenged assumption in modern science which leads you astray.

[qsera]

>discovers that it is only a camera located at some point in space and time.

It discovers no such thing. It can only measure the signals coming from the sensors. That is its ground truth. If a sensor can produce a signal without having an image fall on it, then that would be what the camera sees.

So in this case, it would perceive the image of a camera in a mirror, but that would not be the reality.

[mjburgess]

It doesnt perceive the image of a camera, it's sensor is that image. What it means to perceive is for that image to form. This is the second great fallacies of idealism: (1) the genetic fallacy above that the origin/product of a process must share properties and (2) this fallacy of ambiguity on the word 'see'/perceive (between the mental act of drawing attention to an aspect of a perception, and the physiological act of forming that perception).

When I open my eye, light hits it, striking off the object which I am seeing. What it means to see is for that object to cause my perception. I am NOT seeing my perception, that doesn't make any sense -- it's incoherent because it's an infinite regress.

When I open my eyes and see the coffee, my body changes to have the perception of that coffee as part of my structure -- I am the photographic plate. Just as the photographic plate isnt taking a picture of itself, neither is my eye or mind.

To see is, akin to the photographic plate, to be changed by the world so that you have an impression of it. You do not see seeing, you see objects.

[qsera]

>To see is, akin to the photographic plate, to be changed by the world so that you have an impression of it

And the point is that you don't need the "world" aka reality to make that change. It can come from within, for example a faulty sensor creating an image of a cloud that does not exist.

And the implication that follows is that just because you percieve something does not mean that it is "real".

This can be made more clear if you understand that every "real" object is made up of pixe dust aka fields. When you see a particle at some point, say an electron, there is actually nothing there...but the space at that location behaves, for some reason, as if there is an electron there...

And that is another problem with the physical idea. What happens if you continuously split an object? If it is really physical, then it should remain physical no matter how many times it is split. But we see that it is not the case.

[summarybot]

You say "you don't see seeing, you see objects" ... Seeing itself is an irreducible fundamental of the universe in the human perspective, that's the point. If it could be reduced and you could split the act of seeing into components, you could say there's the eye [sense faculty], the focal object, and the visual consciousness. You're conflating the three and saying objects are both the eye and the visual consciousness, which is imprecise and unhelpful. A mirror doesn't show you yourself, it shows you a reflection of your external appearance. To say you can see yourself in a mirror is akin to saying you can see a sun in the shadow of a tree.

[GoblinSlayer]

If there's no nature out there, then what is hell?

[summarybot]

The distinction is what appears: appearances, versus what actually abides: reality.

[vidarh]

> you cannot prove that we are not in a simulation, and in a sense it does not matter

I'd consider myself a materialist (in the philosophical sense) and this is why (and I agree with the rest of your comment to)

We can not know, but in the absence of evidence to the contrary (e.g. someone metaphorically popping their head in from "outside" and revealing another layer to us), while it is important to understand that we do not know, it is more productive to assume in the absence of evidence, whether it is "real" or subjective or a simulation.

As long as it appears to us to follow consistent rules, we can explore those rules, and explore our apparent material reality.

[kaashif]

Why does whether we're in a simulation or not matter for whether anything is explorable?

You can explore how the simulation works, there's just some other layer you can't explore. Or maybe you can somehow.

When you look at the stars, are they real or a simulation in your brain? Does that mean you can't explore them?

[LoganDark]

> When you look at the stars, are they real or a simulation in your brain?

This is unknowable.

[smackeyacky]

It is knowable isn’t it? We know our brains play a variety of tricks to get a cohesive view out of two wildly complicated but deeply flawed meat sensors.

That fits the definition of a simulation.

[raxxorraxor]

Not into modern philosophy at all, but I do believe, simulated or not, that this is indeed mostly quibbling.

An engineer would ask what a simulation would simulate. This is the core of the meaning behind that word. And if the answer is reality and it hints to the fact you cannot perceive everything and you conscience tries to construct a cohesive understanding from limited perception, than I would dispute the fact. The only one who tries to do that are philosophers. Going back to my objective, not-simulated ignorance now.

[PaulDavisThe1st]

Sorry, but no.

Simulations are systems which have various rules built into them which govern (entirely) the behavior of the components of the system (at whatever levels the rules apply).

A given simulation may have rules that are believed or are intended to generate behavior within it which are similar to some other system (e.g. what we experience as "reality"). But it may just as well have an entirely different set of rules intended to create entirely different, even unknown and unpredictable, behaviors.

Any similarity between a given simulation and what we experience as reality is a property of that particular simulation. There is absolutely no reason why a simulation that is utterly different from our reality could not exist (and indeed, almost certainly already does).

[raxxorraxor]

Simulation in abstract implies to imitate something. Further abstracted to a system of rules removes the reference and it become equivalent to a lot of concepts. It is true that the meaning evolved, but that is probably just an effect because we try to understand reality. And creating a simulation is the test for that understanding. That in best cases fit perceived reality if developed to that goal.

A simulation does not have to model reality and multiple simulations trivially exist. But I don't see why that would imply anything for reality as well from that.

[zchrykng]

Part of the argument is that you can only know what you experience. But, if this is a simulation, "you" could be a program running on a computer and your every experience is just piped directly into your consciousness without any underlying physical reality. You might even not be interacting with other people in the simulation, it could be just you and everything else is simulated without being similar to whatever existence you have.

I don't agree with this argument, but it circulates occasionally.

[visarga]

> "you" could be a program running on a computer

If you are in a sim, then the sim execution is an expensive process, it produces heat and consumes energy. If you are in reality, a material body, then keeping alive also consumes energy. The debates about consciousness often assume a cost-free regime, a platonic perspective. I think this is wrong. We have much to gain thinking about how a process provides its own energy, or how it balances costs and gains. Maybe we can find answers about consciousness too if we chase down the cost recursion path.

[JCTheDenthog]

>If you are in a sim, then the sim execution is an expensive process, it produces heat and consumes energy.

If simulation theory (or similar ideas) are real, it's entirely possible that the "real world" running the simulation operates on completely different physical laws than the simulation.

[LoganDark]

What's unknowable is whether or not there are real stars that correspond with what you seem to observe; not whether or not your observations themselves are the real stars.

[smackeyacky]

Didn’t we already work out they are similar in their spectral output to the Sun, enough to conclude they are the same kind of thing? And observing their movements makes them far away. Do each of us have to do the experiments again to validate that we know what they are?

[nemomarx]

Something could only appear to be similar to the Sun. We have to trust in observation at some level for all of those experiments to be valid, basically, which means first believing that you're conscious and second believing that you can experience reality and so on from there.

You can never really disprove that some malicious entity is just making you think you're seeing the stars and talking to people, if you want to go back to philosophy about it. There's a bit of assumed faith

[visarga]

> Consciousness the the fundamental reality; it is the only thing we know for sure.

Who invented the words "consciousness" "reality" "fundamental" that you are now using? you are using language invented elsewhere while claiming you can't be sure of its reality.

Are you also claiming you can't be sure someone had to create and raise you to get to the point of asking such questions? We are downstream from parents and society.

The whole discussion here is anchored on individual level, but we are not viable outside society. It's like extracting one cell from one organ and saying it is mysterious why it is like that, while ignoring the organism and the evolution.

If society fails, human die too. If a human makes a fatal mistake, the cells in their body die too. We depend on top level doing its job to keep the lower layers viable.

[prmph]

> You are using language invented elsewhere while claiming you can't be sure of its reality.

Your senses are the only thing on which this statement rests. Your don't know anything like "language", "invented" etc. All you know is what your mind and your senses tell you.

And, yes, engaging with you on this topic, and my argument, is also included in what I refer to as my perception. I have no way to prove that you are even conscious, or that anything like language or invention actually are real, whatever real means.

[aerodexis]

So it's through the senses that one attains mathematical knowledge?

[nothinkjustai]

Is this supposed to be some sort of gotcha?

[anon-3988]

> Are you also claiming you can't be sure someone had to create and raise you to get to the point of asking such questions? We are downstream from parents and society.

Yes exactly. You are sure of nothing except the fact this now exists. The simulation could collapse in the next second. I could awake from this dream.

[Xcelerate]

> Consciousness the the fundamental reality; it is the only thing we know for sure.

> I know for sure what I am perceiving

This reflects my view. And I’ve always found it mildly amusing that beings I cannot prove to myself are perceiving attempt to convince me that I’m not perceiving, when that’s exactly what I’m maximally sure of. Imagine arguing with an LLM designed to convince you that you’re not real. It would be weird, wouldn’t it?

[pixl97]

> It would be weird, wouldn’t it?

That depends how it tried and what influences the LLM had on the outside world.

For example if the LLM could drug you, either by convincing you to take drugs, or trick you into doing it, then convincing you that you're not real becomes monumentally easy. Derealization can be a monumentally profound/terrifying experience to your psyche.

[arcastroe]

> Is there only one consciousness in the universe, or multiple?

This sounds similar to the "how do you know you're not dreaming?" question.

When you are in a dream, you really are the only single conciousness of that world. Any other person you interact with inside your dream is not performing any thinking of their own. Instead, dream interactions are just your single consciousness interacting with itself.

I think it is obvious there are multiple consciousness in the universe and not just one. Unless you're in a dream right now ;)

[thomastjeffery]

Only if we abandon reason while simultaneously claiming objectivity.

I cannot know objectively whether I am in a simulation or not. I can, however, reason about my experience, the experiences of others (as I perceive them), and the systems that facilitate perception. All of that information is logically coherent, so I can "know" it. My knowledge may not be objectively proven, but it is the most subjectively relevant conclusion.