I don't think it's entirely correct to say a meteorite hitting you is unperceived.
What if perception isn't exclusive to humans or animals? What if everything has qualia to some degree and "objective" reality is just the sun total of all intersubjectivity? If a tree falls and no human is around then no human perceives it, but the tree might be said to perceive it in some way. This seems to me to fit with quantum mechanics in that the "observer" talked about in wave form collapse is not actually referring to a conscious human observer, but instead can refer to an instrument taking a measure. All interaction of all thing is some level of measure. A rock takes the measure of the rain when it erodes. It's qualia is certainly not the same as ours but who is to say there is no qualia? We can't even prove the qualia of other humans, we merely infer it from our own similar experiences.
Great work! The essay's basically a much more rigorous, scientifically argued version of a post idea I've been toying with for a while now, which would basically argue that supernaturalism and naturalism are in a perpetual stalemate.
Naturalism can say 'I've got Occam's razor on my side; consciousness need be nothing but physically emergent; ideas of a "mind" or a coherent "self" are just stories the self-aware brain tells itself. "Minds" change radically, or even switch off altogether, as a result of sleeping, being half-awake, taking substances, being concussed, being under anesthesia, having dementia, etc. You can even switch the "self" part of the brain off via physical means. Change the brain and you change the person; it's all just brain-states.'
And supernaturalism can reply 'There's tons of anecdotal evidence about out-of-body experiences where the subject knows things they shouldn't be able to know, plus interesting scientific work on reincarnation, etc. More fundamentally, as soon as you claim something is "true" or "false" you're appealing to a world beyond matter. It's not possible for a physical fact (the brain) to make a truth claim about another physical fact (the universe): why give this godlike status to rationality if it's just a brain state among other brain states? Yes, reason's a useful shared standard for seeking agreement among other reasoners, but that's not the same as saying it's actually telling you anything about the world. Even saying "we evolved to understand our environment" involves making any number of philosophical assumptions about time, space, causality, information and the ontological status of matter.'
Me? I choose supernaturalism, because it feels better and, depending on the mood I'm in, truer :)
Regarding randomness being the intervention of a will, saying it's highly speculative is hardly critical of the idea. It's speculation that's not inconsistent with anything we observe, and it might explain things.
Thank you for a great essay! I've been wanting to read something like this overview for a while :) Two and a half thoughts:
T1) Echoing what Superb Owl wrote, I think panpsychism would be a great addition here.
T2) When it comes to idealism, Samuel Johnson's appeal to the rock and the door's appeal to Berkeley's face always seemed very weak to me. Sure, you kick the rock, but what you get back are still only the perceptions of a rock. And why would there be no laws for how minds interact with perceptions (or how different perceptions interact with each other)? If there are, I don't see why we should assume that one can just walk through doors willy-nilly.
T2.5) The issue of how things happen when no one is there to perceive them is the only one that strikes me as a genuine problem, but continuing the echo from before, I feel like some version of panpsychism could patch up that hole.
Lastly, in regards to "[if] the eliminativists are right, mind has no being. What consciousness reveals is that there is something it is like to be nothing." -- I really enjoyed that thought! Chewing on it right now.
I saw a great presentation by a German scientist who explained consciousness as the result of the brain having a model of itself. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mthDxnFXs9k
I'm surprised you didn't mention Panpsychism by name under Idealism.
I'm personally a fan of dual-aspect monism [1], combined with panpsychism.
I'm also intrigued by Schrödinger's notion of an intersubjective reality [2], but without some form of panpsychism I don't think it really holds up--otherwise the moon isn't there when we're not looking.
Really great overview of the different answers though. I'm not sure I agree with the thesis that all views are incoherent, but there's definitely something sticky about the whole question.
I don't think it's entirely correct to say a meteorite hitting you is unperceived.
What if perception isn't exclusive to humans or animals? What if everything has qualia to some degree and "objective" reality is just the sun total of all intersubjectivity? If a tree falls and no human is around then no human perceives it, but the tree might be said to perceive it in some way. This seems to me to fit with quantum mechanics in that the "observer" talked about in wave form collapse is not actually referring to a conscious human observer, but instead can refer to an instrument taking a measure. All interaction of all thing is some level of measure. A rock takes the measure of the rain when it erodes. It's qualia is certainly not the same as ours but who is to say there is no qualia? We can't even prove the qualia of other humans, we merely infer it from our own similar experiences.
Great work! The essay's basically a much more rigorous, scientifically argued version of a post idea I've been toying with for a while now, which would basically argue that supernaturalism and naturalism are in a perpetual stalemate.
Naturalism can say 'I've got Occam's razor on my side; consciousness need be nothing but physically emergent; ideas of a "mind" or a coherent "self" are just stories the self-aware brain tells itself. "Minds" change radically, or even switch off altogether, as a result of sleeping, being half-awake, taking substances, being concussed, being under anesthesia, having dementia, etc. You can even switch the "self" part of the brain off via physical means. Change the brain and you change the person; it's all just brain-states.'
And supernaturalism can reply 'There's tons of anecdotal evidence about out-of-body experiences where the subject knows things they shouldn't be able to know, plus interesting scientific work on reincarnation, etc. More fundamentally, as soon as you claim something is "true" or "false" you're appealing to a world beyond matter. It's not possible for a physical fact (the brain) to make a truth claim about another physical fact (the universe): why give this godlike status to rationality if it's just a brain state among other brain states? Yes, reason's a useful shared standard for seeking agreement among other reasoners, but that's not the same as saying it's actually telling you anything about the world. Even saying "we evolved to understand our environment" involves making any number of philosophical assumptions about time, space, causality, information and the ontological status of matter.'
Me? I choose supernaturalism, because it feels better and, depending on the mood I'm in, truer :)
Regarding randomness being the intervention of a will, saying it's highly speculative is hardly critical of the idea. It's speculation that's not inconsistent with anything we observe, and it might explain things.
Thank you for a great essay! I've been wanting to read something like this overview for a while :) Two and a half thoughts:
T1) Echoing what Superb Owl wrote, I think panpsychism would be a great addition here.
T2) When it comes to idealism, Samuel Johnson's appeal to the rock and the door's appeal to Berkeley's face always seemed very weak to me. Sure, you kick the rock, but what you get back are still only the perceptions of a rock. And why would there be no laws for how minds interact with perceptions (or how different perceptions interact with each other)? If there are, I don't see why we should assume that one can just walk through doors willy-nilly.
T2.5) The issue of how things happen when no one is there to perceive them is the only one that strikes me as a genuine problem, but continuing the echo from before, I feel like some version of panpsychism could patch up that hole.
Lastly, in regards to "[if] the eliminativists are right, mind has no being. What consciousness reveals is that there is something it is like to be nothing." -- I really enjoyed that thought! Chewing on it right now.
I saw a great presentation by a German scientist who explained consciousness as the result of the brain having a model of itself. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mthDxnFXs9k
I'm surprised you didn't mention Panpsychism by name under Idealism.
I'm personally a fan of dual-aspect monism [1], combined with panpsychism.
I'm also intrigued by Schrödinger's notion of an intersubjective reality [2], but without some form of panpsychism I don't think it really holds up--otherwise the moon isn't there when we're not looking.
Really great overview of the different answers though. I'm not sure I agree with the thesis that all views are incoherent, but there's definitely something sticky about the whole question.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Double-aspect_theory
[2] https://superbowl.substack.com/p/church-of-reality-schrodinger-believed#%C2%A7my-view-of-the-world
You missed Empiricism.
See https://drsimonrobin.substack.com/p/our-reality - if you dont look you wont see. :)