This thread was about the soon-to-be-released Ben Stein movie, EXPELLED, right, LOL !!!
Yes, I'm going to see it! It comes out this Friday, April 18. The movie is about SUPPRESSION of knowledge, specifically intelligent design theory. If you want to get a good look at what's really driving the Evolution vs. Intelligent Design debate, I believe this movie will be enlightening. Hint: it's not science vs. religion 😉
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Originally posted by Mark AdkinsYou have not demonstrated the existence of any such thing as "my unconscious". Nor have you demonstrated that experiencing a dream (whether sleeping or waking) indicates the existence of a separate ego.
You have not demonstrated the existence of any such thing as "my unconscious". Nor have you demonstrated that experiencing a dream (whether sleeping or waking) indicates the existence of a separate ego.
Your assertion about dreams is simply false. First of all, unicorns ARE a thing of the waking world (a myth of that world), so dreaming about them ...[text shortened]... saying things one has never observed) are not "simply meshed together old experiences".
I'm sorry. I just assumed that you did not consciously produce your dreams. If that is not the case, then to maintain solipsism, you must admit the unconscious.
I never said that the existence of dreams proves that the unconscious is an ego. I said that your dreams must be produced by an ego - a creative person which can invent concepts it has no previous knowledge of. It must make concepts like "blue" or "building" which have no origin in its life.
First of all, unicorns ARE a thing of the waking world (a myth of that world), so dreaming about them would not represent something new, unless one had never heard of unicorns.
I claimed in my post that they were not something new. Did you read that part?
MY sleeping dreams DO sometimes construct worlds which have no precedence in the waking world. The fact that you are a dullard (even as an ostensible sentient) and actually non-sentient does not change this.
Well, that was my contention: your dreams must be something new.* Mine are not. I cannot dream of what microwaves look like. That has no precedent in my experiences. Microwaves could be perceived visually, but because of my limited sight, I cannot see them, and hence, cannot dream them.
*You seem really confused as to what your dreams are. You do not have sleeping dreams because, as you claim, your "sleeping" and "waking" life is one dream.
So again, explain to me why sleeping dreams indicate the existence of "another ego"? Again, you cannot, and are simply misusing language, and offering specious arguments, because you are a defective pseudo-sentient which refuses to simply admit error and ignorance.
I have. And as of yet, you have not engaged with those arguments. Your most close-reading response was to accuse me of a false conditional between X and Y - without locating what conditional that was or explaining what it was. It seems your arguments are the most specious.
Note also that, even with respect to relatively conventional sleeping dreams which involve fairly ordinary things (e.g., people doing and saying things that might conceivably occur in this world), those dreams (provided they involve people one has never met, doing or saying things one has never observed) are not "simply meshed together old experiences".
That is precisely what I meant by "meshed together old experiences." I might dream of people I have never met, but these people will have features I already know. It could be an fat, bald Asian man with an eye-patch. Even though I have never met him personally, I have met those features that physically constitute him in my dream. My mind has simply combined them to form a unique person. While he as a whole is new, his constituents are not.
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Originally posted by Mark AdkinsFirst, I have not said that all experiences are illusions. I have merely said that my so-called waking life is not what it is commonly claimed to be.
First, I have not said that all experiences are illusions. I have merely said that my so-called waking life is not what it is commonly claimed to be. My experiences, regardless of their underlying ontological nature, are real experiences. But the conventional interpretations of those experiences are incorrect.
Second, in addition to the fact that y ...[text shortened]... nknown modes, whether or not combining pre-existing experiences with entirely new phenomena.
Thankyou for the clarification. You are not a solipsist afterall. My criticisms no longer apply.
Originally posted by Conrau KHow is my statement inconsistent with my being a solipsist?
[b]First, I have not said that all experiences are illusions. I have merely said that my so-called waking life is not what it is commonly claimed to be.
Thankyou for the clarification. You are not a solipsist afterall. My criticisms no longer apply.[/b]
How could ALL experiences be illusions? If I experience what I call "the color red" that experience is undeniably real because I directly experience it. But it is not necessary to interpret that so-called sensory experience in a conventional fashion.
Conrau K: I just assumed that you did not consciously produce your dreams. If that is not the case, then to maintain solipsism, you must admit the unconscious.
Why? And what do you mean by "the unconscious"?
Conrau K: You seem really confused as to what your dreams are. You do not have sleeping dreams because, as you claim, your "sleeping" and "waking" life is one dream.
I have not said that life is a dream. I have said that my universe is a product of mind and that I am the only sentient being in that universe. I do experience varying states of consciousness, and since that is something I possess direct knowledge of your mere contrary assertion cannot change that fact.
Conrau K: I never said that the existence of dreams proves that the unconscious is an ego. I said that your dreams must be produced by an ego - a creative person which can invent concepts it has no previous knowledge of. It must make concepts like "blue" or "building" which have no origin in its life.
Your position is logically inconsistent. You have said that both waking thoughts and sleeping dreams are produced by neuronal activity. You have also said that waking life includes "new things" including literature, music, and other kinds of social complexity. Why should neurons be able to produce new things in waking life but not in sleeping dreams? Or is it your position that mankind is unable to creatively produce anything new in any state of consciousness? And if this is your position, by your own arguments the issue of "newness" is irrelevant when considering solipsistic analogies in which waking life is compared to sleeping dreams.
According to you, when someone in waking life attempts to create, for example visual effects for a science-fiction film, they are not creating anything new. Their neurons are firing and combining things they have already experienced. According to you, the first person to conceive of a "unicorn" simply crossed a horse with a horn. Evidently George Lucas' neurons maintained that Count Dracula + a Pez dispenser = Darth Vader. Beethoven's Fifth symphony wasn't new either. Neither was any of the other social complexity you attribute to waking life. That, at least, is the logical outcome of your argument.
If new things must be provided by another ego, then where does that ego get them from? Another, other ego? This leads to an infinite regress of so-called other egos and nothing new is ever produced.
Conrau K: I cannot dream of what microwaves look like. That has no precedent in my experiences. Microwaves could be perceived visually, but because of my limited sight, I cannot see them, and hence, cannot dream them.
It becomes more and more clear that the limitation actually involved here is the pedestrian quality of your imagination. (I attribute you with one merely as a form of speech, since as I have said I am a solipsist and you are non-sentient.) It's perfectly easy to imagine seeing microwaves, whether one is awake or asleep. That is the wonderful thing about imagination: it is not limited to what is "possible in real life".
Conrau K: I might dream of people I have never met, but these people will have features I already know. It could be an fat, bald Asian man with an eye-patch. Even though I have never met him personally, I have met those features that physically constitute him in my dream. My mind has simply combined them to form a unique person. While he as a whole is new, his constituents are not.
It is unclear to me what could ever constitute "new" to you. What if you dreamed of an alien life form, pure energy but able to manifest itself by means which could be perceived by your visual senses (perhaps as amazing colors which do not exist in waking life), or strange sensations which transcend the five senses and suggest the existence of dormant "other senses" which can only be stimulated telepathically? Would this be new? Or would it all merely be "the same old things, only different"?
Conrau K: Your unconscious sounds really smart. Can I speak to it from now on?
It's a shame that we couldn't dispense with that irritable Beethoven fellow and talk to the neurons that dictated the Moonlight Sonata to him. They're obviously much brighter than he was (all he did was sit around drinking bier and belching).
The first thing I would ask Beethoven's neurons is, How did you come up with the Moonlight Sonata? Was this dictated to you in turn by an "other ego" in a bizarre Jeckyl & Hyde process?
And they would explain, quite credibly, how it wasn't anything new, but very much the same old things, only different.
"We took some other piano music, shuffled the notes around, made some longer and others shorter, added some here and subtracted some there, and voila! Then we told Beethoven what to write. Was he grateful? Bah! The lout doesn't even know we exist. He actually thinks he is writing this stuff. The gall! He is merely a flatulent stenographer."
But now it occurs to me that the neurons are actually taking dictation from the molecules they are composed of. So if I REALLY wanted to talk to the smart ones, I'd need to cut out the middleman and chat with them. Only, the molecules are made of atoms, and if I asked the atoms how the Moonlight Sonata came from their random changes of quantum state, they would in turn point to their constituent particles. These in turn would point to other particles -- oh dear! -- and so on, and so forth, all the way back to the Big Bang.
I wanted to ask the Big Bang how it came up with the Moonlight Sonata, but it wasn't taking any calls. That's a shame, because I had some other questions also. Why was the last episode of Seinfeld so lame? Was that mesh shirt worn by Right Said Fred really such a good idea? Who is going to win this season of American Idol? (I don't watch but there might be a betting pool.)
Conrau K wrote: I cannot dream of what microwaves look like. That has no precedent in my experiences. Microwaves could be perceived visually, but because of my limited sight, I cannot see them, and hence, cannot dream them.
Mark Adkins responded: It's perfectly easy to imagine seeing microwaves, whether one is awake or asleep. That is the wonderful thing about imagination: it is not limited to what is "possible in real life".
I'd like to amplify this a little. First, "seeing" in dreams doesn't involve ocular events or retinal stimulation, so what you can or can't see with your eyes is irrelevant to what you can see in dreams.
Second, I can't levitate in waking life (so far), nor do I know of anyone who has convincingly claimed to, yet I've had plenty of flying dreams of the levitation variety, and in fact this is reportedly one of the most common types of dreams. I've also had dreams where I hovered disembodied over scenes and could instantaneously shift scenes; dreams where I sensed the presence of invisible beings; dreams where I had telekinetic powers; and far stranger dreams than these -- so strange that (in certain aspects) they defy descriptive powers. None of these dream activities or modes had precedents in waking life, yet that didn't stop me from experiencing them.
Third, I've experienced events in dreams with a level of detail, vividness and creativity which convince me that my mind is quite capable of creating my so-called "waking world" as well, whether as a comatose fugue or as something far more unconventional.
Fourth, even so-called waking visual perception isn't performed with the eyes: sight is always and everywhere a mental experience. Do you suppose that you can actually "see" something smaller than the limits of visual resolution, such as photons of sunlight? No. Visual scenes are (according to conventional "scientific" theory) assembled by the brain. And in sleeping dreams one's neuronal activity is in certain respects even freer than in a waking state, so it should not be surprising, even if considered from a conventional perspective, that one's dreams can involve unusual elements.
Conrau K wrote: Your most close-reading response was to accuse me of a false conditional between X and Y - without locating what conditional that was or explaining what it was.
Actually, what I wrote was "You say that X implies Y while indicating that you understand neither X nor Y as well as mistaking a particular relation between X and Y (among many possible) as logically necessary".
And I have given numerous instances of this. In fact, some of them are even now staring you in the face (as it were). You have not recognized them as such because (a) I did not explicitly label them as such, and (b) you are a dullard. I will not label them explicitly now. Go and peck in the dirt for your corn, dullard.
Originally posted by Grampy BobbyThat's awfully arrogant to tell someone else what has value, isn't it? Is arrogance a Christian
This long winded egocentric/relativistic philosophical speculation is crap. Why?
Because it holds no temporal or permanent value for any of us yesterday or today.
virtue?
Nemesio
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Originally posted by Mark AdkinsOriginally, you were a solipsist with quotes like these:
How is my statement inconsistent with my being a solipsist?
How could ALL experiences be illusions? If I experience what I call "the color red" that experience is undeniably real because I directly experience it. But it is not necessary to interpret that so-called sensory experience in a conventional fashion.
I rather imagine a mind -- powerful beyond that ordinarily conceived of, and without certain other limitations as well -- a mind existing in isolation and yet without the need for external support to exist
and
I DO think that my universe is (in one sense or another) a figment of my imagination
You then, however, contradict yourself when you admit that other things might exist:
I might be connected to some powerful supercomputer intended to simulate reality but which, through malfunction or improper planning, is not functioning properly
I hope this is not an example of your sentience.
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Originally posted by Mark AdkinsWhy? And what do you mean by "the unconscious"?
Conrau K: I just assumed that you did not consciously produce your dreams. If that is not the case, then to maintain solipsism, you must admit the unconscious.
Why? And what do you mean by "the unconscious"?
Conrau K: You seem really confused as to what your dreams are. You do not have sleeping dreams because, as you claim, your "sleeping" and "w w? Or would it all merely be "the same old things, only different"?
The part of your mind that you have no conscious knowledge of or impact on. Your unconscious is presupposed from the statement that you make up reality, yet at the same time, you have no conscious knowledge of this.
I have not said that life is a dream. I have said that my universe is a product of mind and that I am the only sentient being in that universe. I do experience varying states of consciousness, and since that is something I possess direct knowledge of your mere contrary assertion cannot change that fact.
I actually have no idea what you have said. In previous posts you have explained:
then even though it might be said that they are (broadly) a product of my sleeping mind, it cannot be said that they are behaving as I wish, or that they are the direct and deliberate product of my mind.
But later you said, "I suggest that my universe, though not a sleeping dream in the conventional sense, is the product of an altered, impaired state of consciousness."
You ought to clarify.
You have said that both waking thoughts and sleeping dreams are produced by neuronal activity. You have also said that waking life includes "new things" including literature, music, and other kinds of social complexity. Why should neurons be able to produce new things in waking life but not in sleeping dreams? Or is it your position that mankind is unable to creatively produce anything new in any state of consciousness?
My fault. This is simply my own prejudice. I do not regard an unconscious random association of idea, memories, past experiences, as a creative process. And consequently, the outcome of this unconscious activity, I do not consider new.
If a writer, however, took his memories and then selectively crafted them into a book, that would be a creative process. It is not random. And the outcome is new.
You might maintain that the dream also produces similarly new things. The point is irrelevant. If my unconscious invents new things, demonstrates creative abilities, then I will accept that I have another ego, to some extent.
You as a solipsist, cannot do this. So I am interested to hear how you could argue that you make your reality up; you do not consciously do so; and you do not have an unconscious.
It's perfectly easy to imagine seeing microwaves, whether one is awake or asleep. That is the wonderful thing about imagination: it is not limited to what is "possible in real life".
Do you think a congenitally blind man (with no synesthetic experience, either, of colour) can dream of red?
What if you dreamed of an alien life form, pure energy but able to manifest itself by means which could be perceived by your visual senses (perhaps as amazing colors which do not exist in waking life),
That would certainly be new in the original sense of my usage. If I dreamed of such a thing, I would have to admit that my unconscious really does possess powers of creation and is an ego itself.