Abyss

I have these big red eyes to clearly see the truth, however dark it may be.

[Abyss @abyssatis]

@ByJimbob @AOMtheTaymi Logic is just self-evident. There are structural necessities and our reasoning is subject to such necessities too, like everything else, so it can grasp them directly, exactly because there’s no way to “think otherwise”, e. g., to think 2 + 2 = 5 or MP failing.

[Abyss @abyssatis]

@Strangeazulmoon @woarna_is_right I’m presentist, so I take it that only the present exists. As for concepts, the concepts themselves do exist in our minds, but Sherlock isn’t the concept: he is the nonexistent detective that our existent concept *is about*. We won’t agree. I’m with Meinong/Priest, you are not.

[Abyss @abyssatis]

@historicganglo @SpeedWatkins But ok. Enough is enough. Have the last word if you want.

[Abyss @abyssatis]

@historicganglo @SpeedWatkins “The motions of atoms from eye to brain create the experience of green.”

Compare: the motions of atoms of fuel inside a car engine create the experience of gruun – a sui generis feeling, vaguely like a taste, of “felt potency”.

That would be magic, not an obvious consequence.

[Abyss @abyssatis]

@historicganglo @SpeedWatkins My point is green *itself* exists, *exactly as it appears to us*, regardless of how it’s used by the brain to depict the world. Our hardware can only “perceive it” if it exists. But its existence (a subjective quality, NOT some atomic pattern) isn’t entailed by atoms interacting.

[Abyss @abyssatis]

@historicganglo @SpeedWatkins Green has nothing *essentially* to do with wavelengths. One can induce green experiences in the full absence of light, or eyes, by brain stimulation. Other species could use green to “paint” not light, but air waves. Green is real and subjective. It’s just not a pack of atoms.

[Abyss @abyssatis]

@EraOccidental @AnselmDescartes “Being identical to itself”, or “being identical to something”, are not the same properties as “existence”. Most nonexistent things are identical to themselves too. Like Elvis (no longer existing), the first person born in 2027 (not yet existing), Batman (fictional), 5 (abstract)

[Abyss @abyssatis]

@historicganglo @SpeedWatkins As for “illusion of green”, an illusion is an appearance that doesn’t match the external world. An illusion of chair means there’s no objective chair matching the appearance. It DOESN’T MEAN that *the appearance itself* doesn’t exist. Green exists.

[Abyss @abyssatis]

@historicganglo @SpeedWatkins The only thing that atoms can create, per currently accepted physics, is law-bound movement in other atoms. Nothing else. If they do create green somehow (which is no movement of atoms), that’s a mystery: it doesn’t follow from motion laws.

[Abyss @abyssatis]

@historicganglo @SpeedWatkins “The self is merely a config. of atoms”. At least you said it. That’s exactly as obviously false as “green, *the color itself*, is merely a configuration of atoms”. It clearly isn’t. You are just stating a false identity, like 5 = Mars. A complex of atoms isn’t a simple quality.

[Abyss @abyssatis]

@historicganglo @SpeedWatkins I mostly think that, for you, “self” and “consciousness” are kind of vague terms, meaning something like “physical pattern complexity ordered so as to sync-up with the external world”. It’s like you believed that a camera *literally sees images*, because of its physical design.

[Abyss @abyssatis]

@historicganglo @SpeedWatkins You gotta also fix your attention in that, even though the GREEN THING actually exists (it exists only in first person, exactly as it appears: it is the very appearance!), it *doesn’t exist* anywhere in the objective space: no collection or pattern of atoms IS that green thing.

[Abyss @abyssatis]

@historicganglo @SpeedWatkins The mystery is the very existence of the right at all. The left should ONLY behave exactly as it does, and the causal chain ending up in proper behavior would be exactly the same. But, as you said yourself, ON TOP OF THAT the subjective experience “arises”. THAT is the mystery.

[Abyss @abyssatis]

@historicganglo @SpeedWatkins The abyss of our disagreement is way worse then. No wonder I feel like hitting a wall, no thought seems to get through properly!

[Abyss @abyssatis]

@historicganglo @SpeedWatkins From my POV, you are not getting at all what I’m saying. When you say “selfhood” you can only be meaning some pattern of neuron firings, for only those exist in your view, not *actual subjectivity*. Spatial movement isn’t subjectivity or inner quality! I asked GPT for that pic:

[Abyss @abyssatis]

@historicganglo @SpeedWatkins Clearly, the whole point of the brain and the skull, in my picture, is to modulate/isolate a portion of the EM field into a carefully crafted (by natural selection) stage of representation. Only the crafted portion should be felt as coherent self.

[Abyss @abyssatis]

@historicganglo @SpeedWatkins Worth adding: if the objective atoms (as currently understood, that is) were truly the whole story, then ALL of our complex behavior in physical space could EMERGE – easily so! But no subjectivity at all is entailed by that: we would behave the same, just with no self/experience.

[Abyss @abyssatis]

@historicganglo @SpeedWatkins …know from 1st person (the very 1st person perspective that shouldn’t exist) that the self is a subjective presentation, with color, pain and other subjective modalities. THAT THING, the mind, is clearly NOT IDENTICAL to some pattern of neurons. Both are radically distinct. 2/2

[Abyss @abyssatis]

@nebulica That one I can even consistently switch the direction half-spin, going back and forth 180 degrees, clearly “catching the glitchy paradoxical change of perspective”, so to speak.