Taffy Lewis

bd-from-kg,

You quoted me as saying, "In my first post, I emphasized that belief in God is not reasonably compared to belief in this or that physical object." In response you said:

We do indeed have particular experiences. However, access to God is gained through theistic perception. This is a form of perception distinct from sensory perception. Since it is the case that if God exists then he is at least as fundamental a feature of reality as the physical world then access to him would also be as fundamental as sensory perception. So belief in God is best compared to belief in the entire external physical world.

Therefore, the claim "God exists." is on a par with the claim that "There exists an external physical world."

This isn't always true. Belief in the existence of the moon has been based entirely on visual perception. A few men have confirmed their sight with touch but obviously this isn't necessary.

The direct realist and the representationalist make distinct, incompatible claims about the nature of perception. They are most certainly not two different ways of talking about perception. I provided a useful introductory discussion of theories of perception at:

<a href="http://www.wikipedia.com/wiki/Philosophy+of+perception" target="_blank">Philosophy of Perception</a>

This is a misunderstanding. Neurons are only objects of perception when people are observing brains. Perception has a quality of mental states known as "intentionality". This means nothing more than that they are "of", "about", or "direct at" various states of affairs. When I see light reflected I do not perceive brain states. They are not part of the content of my visual perception.

In Chapter Two of his book Intentionality, John Searle has an excellent discussion of perception. He says:

Later, he says:

I agree with Searle that direct realism is to be preferred to representationalism but I also pointed out that belief in God or the physical world does not depend on any particular theory of perception. So I don't understand your claim that:

Whatever the correct theory of perception, I mean to claim that sensory experience and experience of God are both forms of perception and thus the same theory of perception applies to each.

Most proponents of representationalism haven't claimed that they cannot reasonably believe in the existence of the physical world. If your theory suggests otherwise that is one more reason to reject it. I think it is obvious that we know the physical world exists. It seems crazy to suggest otherwise. In fact, it seems as though you are oscillating between representationalism and phenomenalism as the above quote would usually be attributed to a phenomenalist.

As with sensory experience, we use theistic perception to form a network of beliefs about God. This allows theists to form an idea of what kind of being God is. For example, the vast majority of theistic perceptions are of a personal being of great power and knowledge who is perfectly good and loving, among other things. So we know that theistic perceptions of a being who is evil must be illusory. Just as sensory experience is used to determine the difference between veridical and nonveridical sensory experiences, theistic perception can be used to determine the difference between veridical and nonveridical experiences of God.

By 'logical intuition', I mean nothing more than that some propositions are known to be true simply by reflecting on their meaning. It's not a form of sensory experience or memory. I mean nothing more controversial than that.

You must remember that belief in God is on a par with belief in the external physical world. What is the difference in explanatory power between phenomenalism and realism? It both cases, our sensory experiences are identical so nothing you could observe would distinguish between them.

You seem to have confused scientific theories with metaphysical theories. Belief in an external physical world is not a scientific theory. Nor is belief in God.

As I have already said, belief in God is just another case of a belief in another mind. There is nothing radical about it. Further, it has an enormous simplyfying effect. For the atheist, there exist some objects with minds "behind" them and there are other objects without a mind behind them. But for the theist, a mind is at the foundation of everything.

You go on to say:

But God isn't utterly incomprehensible. He is a conscious, purposive agent. I understand perfectly well what this means. Further, merely giving a more complete description of God won't make him beyond comprehension or radical in any way. Every object is unique under some description. So God's unique description is one of omnipotence and omniscience. And my unique description involves a specific claim about my power and knowledge. Further, all of our knowledge and power is a subset of God's knowledge and power. So once again we are similar.

Sure. God's power and knowledge far exceeds ours. But our power and knowledge far exceeds that of an ant. This says nothing with regard to how reasonable it is to believe in either.

I'll respond to the remainder of your post when I have more time.

[ August 18, 2002: Message edited by: Taffy Lewis ]

[ August 18, 2002: Message edited by: Taffy Lewis ]</p>

Vorkosigan

Taffy, on one hand, you say:

• We do indeed have particular experiences. However, access to God is gained through theistic perception. This is a form of perception distinct from sensory perception.

Then you write:

• Whatever the correct theory of perception, I mean to claim that sensory experience and experience of God are both forms of perception and thus the same theory of perception applies to each.

Why does (1) above not contradict (2)? What do you mean?

Fine, let's apply the same theory of perception. In cognitive science -- not philosophy, which, while good at asking questions, is poor at providing answers (doesn't it bug you that the most recent theory mentioned on that site you referenced is Berkeley's?)-- inputs are processed in various places around the brain, utilizing hardware and software evolved for that function.

Note the consequences of this.

• First, inputs -- sense data from the world -- are stable over long periods of time, in order for evolution to produce organs dedicated to them.
• Second, the brain filters the world and reconstructs it.
• Third, sensory organs are task-dedicated. The eye and ear only get inputs from the world, they don't process it. This means that the brain cannot sense anything.
• Fourth, sensory organs are easily identified and demand resources, including processing resources, from the brain and body
• Fifth, the brain needs sensory input in order to function properly and will produce it even when not present (phantom limbs, hallucinations).
• Sixth, because sensory inputs are stable real-world inputs, they can be detected by independent machinery. This means that in theory gods ought to be detectable, but of course they are not.

As with sensory experience, we use theistic perception to form a network of beliefs about God. This allows theists to form an idea of what kind of being God is. For example, the vast majority of theistic perceptions are of a personal being of great power and knowledge who is perfectly good and loving, among other things.

You have data for this? Solid third-party non-qualitative non post-hoc data gathered during such experiences? Data gathered during NDEs suggests that a significant proportion are in fact evil.

So we know that theistic perceptions of a being who is evil must be illusory.

Incorrect. Since when was reality up to majority vote? Only evidence and argument count, which you appear to have neither. It could well be that the majority of such experiences are delusory. Come to think of it, that would hardly be surprising.

Just as sensory experience is used to determine the difference between veridical and nonveridical sensory experiences, theistic perception can be used to determine the difference between veridical and nonveridical experiences of God.

On what grounds?

Further, it has an enormous simplyfying effect.
For the atheist, there exist some objects with minds "behind" them and there are other objects without a mind behind them. But for the theist, a mind is at the foundation of everything.

Both BD and I have already addressed this issue and you have ignored everything we wrote. Rather than repeating this obvious nonsense, please show how unsupported belief in a mysterious, inscrutable, arbitrary, and arguable deity is simpler than knowledge of a dozen or so universal constants and fundamental laws.

But God isn't utterly incomprehensible. He is a conscious, purposive agent. I understand perfectly well what this means. Further, merely giving a more complete description of God won't make him beyond comprehension or radical in any way. Every object is unique under some description. So God's unique description is one of omnipotence and omniscience. And my unique description involves a specific claim about my power and knowledge. Further, all of our knowledge and power is a subset of God's knowledge and power.

True of chi, Crom, Tloluvin, Odin, the One.... We can invent fictional beings with given properties from now until the cows come home, but informing us of their properties doesn't make them true.

Vorkosigan

[ August 19, 2002: Message edited by: Vorkosigan ]</p>

bd-from-kg

Taffy:

Although you keep saying that “belief in God or the physical world does not depend on any particular theory of perception” (or as I would say, what account of perception, or way of describing or talking about perceptual experiences, one adopts), you seem to be obsessed with objecting to every statement that seems to be based on any account, or way of describing, perceptual events other than the “direct perception” model. I don’t understand this. As you say, it really doesn’t matter, even if you think that the different models (or theories, or whatever) really disagree substantively. You should have no trouble translating statements grounded in one model or theory into your preferred one.

However, to get past your obsession on this point, I’ll do my best to base all of my statements about perception on the “direct realist” account from now on. In return, I hope that you won’t accuse me of being inconsistent on the grounds that I wasn’t doing so before.

Now to the specifics of your latest post.

Missing the point as usual. My point was that the grounds for belief in God (to the extent that they consist of a “theistic perception” events) must be compared to our grounds for belief in particular physical entities rather than of the physical world, for the simple reason that all of our sensory experiences are of particular physical entities rather than of the physical world as a whole. It’s true, of course, that we often perceive (or at least interpret an experience as involving the perception of) more than one physical entity, but we never perceive (or are even under the impression that we perceive) the physical world as a whole. That’s why all of both your analogies and mine between “theistic perception” experiences and “sensory perception” experiences are to perceptions of particular physical objects rather than to the physical world.

As so often happens, I have no idea what your point is. Sure, if only one sense is involved there won’t be correlations across senses. But if more than one sense is involved, we do expect to find correlations across senses, and the absence of such correlation will cast serious doubt on whether we are actually perceiving a physical object. Thus, if I seem to perceive my brother in the middle of the room, but my hand goes right through him when I try to shake hands, I will doubt (to put it mildly) that I’m really perceiving my brother. This is one of many kinds of cross-checks by which we can and do test hypotheses to the effect that we are perceiving physical objects – cross-checks which seem to be entirely absent in the case of so-called “theistic perception”.

Please stop insulting me by directing me to elementary introductory lectures.

What I actually said was:

Thus (a) I was talking about the “direct realist” account of hallucinations, and (b) I explicitly stated that according to this account, in a hallucination you aren’t perceiving anything at all. So I certainly wasn’t saying that when you hallucinate you’re perceiving neurons. Still, as that Philosophy of Perception paper that you seem to like so much points out:

In other words: when you’re hallucinating you certainly seem to be aware of something. But since the direct realist account seems to reject the notion of “sense-data”, we are left with the question of what it is that you’re aware of. Since I consider such questions to be merely matters of linguistics, I’ll be happy to go with whatever answer you prefer.

Yes, this does look like an interesting discussion. And I have the greatest respect for Searle. Now could you point out what he says that you think is relevant to our discussion?

OK. Here’s what you said:

And elsewhere:

Now as Vorkosigan and I have by now explained at considerable length, this is not how sensory perception works, although it seems from some of your comments that you still have not even begun to grasp this elementary point. For example, you say:

One does not simply “directly perceive” a tree. My perception of a tree does not consist simply of the fact that it seems to me that a tree is present. One receives certain sensory inputs, and after an enormous amount of processing (which can be reconstructed as an extremely long chain of inferences) your brain “reports” to your conscious mind that the best interpretation of these inputs based on a vast database of previous inputs and the conceptual framework that it has constructed to interpret them is that they’re coming from a tree.

Your position seems to be that nothing of this sort happens in the case of “theistic perception” experiences. Your brain does not compare the experience to a vast database of previous experiences, noting similarities and differences, searching for a “best match” and concluding that this experience is probably coming from the same source (or same type of source). On the contrary, the experience presents itself to your consciousness directly as a “perception of God”, and that’s that.

This is confirmed by a passage from Alston that you quote approvingly:

Now suppose that someone were to say, “The thesis defended here is not that the existence of this tree proves the best explanation for facts about certain sensory experiences or that it is possible to argue in any way from the latter to the former. It is rather that people do sometimes perceive this tree and thereby acquire justified beliefs about it.” Obviously he would be spouting nonsense. When you “perceive a tree,” what happens is precisely that your brain concludes that the existence of the tree is the best explanation for facts about certain sensory experiences that you’ve had. And this belief is warranted if and only if it is possible to argue from the latter to the former (i.e., from the sensory experiences to the existence of the tree). To say that the argument from “theistic perception” to the existence of God is nothing like this is to say that “theistic perception” doesn’t work anything like sensory perception.

But if “theistic perception” has nothing in common with sensory perception (beyond the bare fact that both are allegedly “perceptions” in some sense) any attempt to show that “theistic perception” is a reliable “belief-forming mechanism” based on analogies to sensory perception are completely invalid.

We’ve already seen why this statement is invalid. But I also have a problem with your terminology; it seems to be designed to facilitate a logical fallacy.

If you’re going to go with the “direct realist” account, you may not say that sensory experience is a “form of perception”. It’s a form of perception only in case you are actually perceiving something. Of course, you can define an event to be a “sensory experience” only if you are actually perceiving something. But in that case you have to have some way of determining whether an experience really involves perceiving something before you can call it a sensory experience. No verbal legerdemain can get around this: the fact that you seem to be perceiving something doesn’t show that you are perceiving something, much less that you’re perceiving what you think you’re perceiving.

The same thing applies in spades to a so-called “theistic perception” experience. Calling it a “perception experience” doesn’t make it a perception experience.

Referring to such experiences as “experience of God” is begging the question even more. To justify this terminology you would have to show not only that “theistic perception” experiences actually involve perception of something, but that the “something” perceived is actually God. You haven’t even begun to show this.

Alternatively, you can say that a “theistic perception” experience is necessarily a perception of God, because that’s what it means to call something a theistic perception experience. In that case you need to show that there are such things as theistic perception experiences. Again, you seem to be trying to reach the desired conclusion via semantic sleight-of-hand.

I don’t suggest otherwise. I think that it is completely reasonable and rational to have an ontology that includes physical objects and other aspects of the physical world. But we can’t know that physical objects, etc. actually exist. However, the point that I was really trying to make is that we cannot know that our ontology corresponds to the physical world – i.e., that there is anything like a one-to-one mapping between the physical world and our conception of it. The conceptual framework that I call my ontology was constructed to account for my experiences and make predictions about future ones. So far it’s done pretty well. But that does not mean that it actually corresponds to the way things “really” are, or even that there’s any resemblance between reality and my conception of it. (In fact, I don’t think it is even meaningful to ask whether there’s a resemblance. For example, in what sense could my concept of a beach ball be meaningfully said to resemble an actual beach ball?)

No, it isn’t obvious. It’s not even true.

OK, I’m crazy. So are most philosophers nowadays. In fact, one of the philosophers who is “crazy” this way is your pal Alston. In the article <a href="http://www.pitt.edu/~rmgale/alston.htm" target="_blank">The Overall Argument of Alston's Perceiving God</a> that you cited earlier, Gale begins his outline of Alston’s argument as follows:

Now back to your post.

Your network of beliefs about God (like those of most theists) goes far, far beyond anything that could conceivably be justified by “theistic perception”, even if you were justified in believing that such experiences were actually perceptions of God. The only beliefs about God that would be justified by these experiences would be those things that all, or nearly all, of those who have them “perceive”. Even on your showing, this is a very short list. And, of course, Vorkosigan and I have offered a host of reasons why you are far from being justified even in ascribing these properties to God, or even in concluding that God exists, on the basis of such experiences, because there is no justification for believing that so-called “theistic perception” experiences involve any actual perception of anything at all, much less perception of God.

This is ridiculous. You claim that you are perceiving a being of “great power and knowledge” – far greater than yours, presumably. This in itself removes any rational grounds for supposing that the actual properties of the being in question are the ones that you seem to perceive. A malevolent being of great power and knowledge would have no difficulty whatsoever in causing you to perceive him as “perfectly good and loving”. So on your own showing you have no means whatsoever of determining the true nature of this supposed being beyond his having great power and knowledge.

Actually there are two issues regarding any given sensory experience: (1) Are we actually perceiving anything at all? and (2) If so, what is it that we are perceiving? I’m not sure whether by a “veridical sensory experience” you mean one in which we are actually perceiving something, or one in which we are actually perceiving what we think we’re perceiving. Since the first question is crucial, I’ll assume for now that by a “veridical sensory experience” you mean one in which we are actually perceiving something. Once one sees the impossibility of answering even this “entry-level” question with any confidence in the case of “theistic perception” experiences, it will be clear why it is completely hopeless to even begin to try to answer the second.

And here we come to a point that you seem to be totally incapable of understanding. Using sensory experience to determine the difference between veridical and nonveridical sensory experience is obviously circular. What we actually do is to adopt the simplest explanatory scheme that is consistent with all of our sensory (and other) experience. As it happens, the simplest scheme involves the hypothesis that some of our sensory experiences are nonveridical (i.e., that they do not involve perception of anything at all). But all of this is based on a vast amount and variety of sensory experiences. If all of our sensory experiences were very similar, finding such distinguishing criteria would be hopeless. There would be no way of testing any given sensory experience to determine whether it should be classified as a perception (much less determine what was perceived).

But according to you all “theistic perception” experiences are very similar. Thus there is no possibility of formulating criteria to distinguish veridical ones from nonveridical ones.

Then why call it intuition? If I know that Jane gave birth to Sally, I also know that she is Sally’s mother. Most people do not refer to this sort of thing as “intuition”. They refer to as “understanding plain English”.

Besides, while logic may be regarded as a “belief forming mechanism,” it is not a form of perception. So the fact that the differences between the way I get from sensory inputs to “There’s a tree in front of me” and the way I get from “Jane gave birth to Sally” to “Jane is Sally’s mother” do not invalidate the latter as a reliable way of arriving at true beliefs has nothing to do with whether the differences between sensory perception and so-called “theistic perception” invalidate the latter as a reliable way of arriving at true beliefs.

Hardly. Belief in the physical world isn’t really optional. Our brains are so structured that we will believe in it, willy-nilly. Even philosophers who espouse phenomenalism really believe in the physical world.

Quite true. Phenomenalism is just as consistent with our sensory experiences (or indeed, with any possible sensory experiences) as “realism” (by which I gather that you mean any conceptual framework that includes physical objects, etc., aka the “real world”). The objection to phenomenalism is not that it’s “false” (a meaningless claim in this context) but that it’s an unnecessarily complicated, counterintuitive conceptual framework, so there’s no rational reason to adopt it. This is an appropriate criterion for metaphysical theories (the other one being that they must be logically coherent). Indeed, if it were possible to decide between phenomenalism and realism on the basis of sensory experiences, they would not be metaphysical theories, but empirical theories.

Nope. You’re the one who’s done that. Metaphysical theories by definition do not depend on perceptual experiences of any kind. They are (among other things) a means by which we interpret perceptual experiences. By citing alleged perceptual evidence for God you have removed it from the category of a metaphysical theory and placed it squarely into the category of a scientific theory – or more precisely, an empirical theory. You cannot cite alleged empirical evidence for God and then claim that as a metaphysical theory it is exempt from being evaluated by the criteria appropriate to empirical theories. One of these (to get back to my original point here) is its explanatory value. Since the God hypothesis has no explanatory (or predictive) value whatever, it is automatically out of court as an empirical theory.

No, but it’s an empirical theory – it’s based on perceptual experiences.

Once again: if you’re going to ground your belief in God on empirical evidence, it has to satisfy the same requirements as any other hypothesis based on empirical evidence. In other words, you have to show that it is the simplest explanation of this evidence that is consistent with all other empirical evidence.

That’s ridiculous. Any fool can see that adding God to a naturalistic ontology is an enormously radical modification. This argument is a non-starter.

Let’s see:

(1) Naturalistic hypothesis: Some objects have minds “behind” them.

(2). Theistic hypothesis: Some objects have ordinary minds “behind” them. But in addition to these minds, there is another, unimaginably complex mind “behind” everything.

Now explain to me again how (2) is a simpler hypothesis than (1).

Oh, so if you understand the concept of a conscious, purposive agent, you understand God! Is that all that God means to you - just a conscious purposive agent, pretty much like any other conscious, purposive agent?

By this argument it follows that nothing (even among the things that don’t exist but are logically possible) is beyond your comprehension! You have my unbounded admiration.

Let’s see. The empty set is a subset of the set of all sets of real numbers. so clearly the empty set is similar to the set of all sets of real numbers. But again, it’s a subset of the set of all sets of emperors. So it’s also similar to the set of all sets of emperors. This is truly an original argument.

Really? Let’s see how this plays in other contexts:

Reilly: So, have you come up with a theory about what’s causing this radio interference?

Taylor: Yes, I have. I think it’s being caused by an incredibly advanced race of aliens which is billions of years ahead of us technologically.

Reilly: Oh? Why are they interested in our backward little planet?

Taylor: According to my theory they’re part of a huge intergalactic federation that monitors every planet in the universe and secretly controls everything that happens. The race that’s monitoring us just happens to have been assigned our planet.

Reilly: Really! And what evidence do you have for all this?

Taylor: Well, when I listen closely to the static played backward at one-tenth speed I find that I enter a trancelike state in which I have an irresistible feeling of a powerful, advanced race working for a universe-wide alliance. Besides, it all fits a science fiction story I read a long time ago, so it must be right.

Now. Are you sure that you want to take the position that the fact that a hypothesis requires a far-reaching modification of our ideas about the nature of reality says nothing about how reasonable it is to believe it? Or would you say that perhaps Taylor is basing some rather large conclusions on possibly inadequate evidence?

But Taylor’s hypothesis is far less radical than the God hypothesis. It requires, by comparison, only a trivial modification of our ideas about reality. The entities that he hypothesizes are just personal beings like us. And in addition they are completely “ordinary”; there is nothing supernatural about them. They are finite; they are mortal; they can create things only by modifying existing things; they cannot foresee the future (except in the same ways that we can); they know only what they can infer from their senses; they cannot give us (or anyone else) eternal bliss or eternal torment.

Yet I think that you’ll agree that a rational person would only accept this hypothesis if Taylor were able to produce incomparably better evidence than he has to offer here.

In short, you’re offering a ridiculously far-reaching, incredibly radical hypothesis to explain a trivial phenomenon which can easily be explained in terms of things that are already known. This is completely irrational.

[ August 21, 2002: Message edited by: bd-from-kg ]</p>

doubtingt

The problem is that our subjective perception of objects (God or otherwise) does not itself provide evidence of their existence. Any perception could be a response to the actual properties of a real object, or could be a complete fabrication of the mind. In the case of physical objects, we are capable of separating the properties of objects from perception, through the use of multiple independent observers, and manipulation of those objects to create both convergence and divergence between the assumed object properties and perception.
The assumption that these perceptions of objects are all entirely fabricated is unable to account for or predict what is observed by independent perceivers, and no psychological mechanism could explain these perceptions without assuming the existence of external obeject impinging on the senses.

In contrast, the perception of God shows no correspondence to anything outside the perceivers mind. However, it does show correspondence to psychological states, and biological states (drugs, sleep deprivation, psychosis). Thus, the only rational conclusion is that God perception is produced by internal, psycho-biological factors and not by objective properties of something outside the perceptual system itself.

bd-from-kg

Vorkosigan:

While we’re waiting for further input (if any) from Taffy Lewis, I might as well comment on your post to me a while back.

But what does this all mean? More generally, what could it mean to say “You think you’re doing such-and-such consciously, but you’re wrong”. Doesn’t the very fact that I think (consciously) that I’m doing something consciously prove that I’m conscious of doing it? And doesn’t that mean that I’m doing it consciously? If saying that one does something consciously doesn’t mean that one is conscious of doing it, what does it mean? In other words, I don’t understand how it’s possible in principle to be wrong about something like this.

Perhaps you could clarify your meaning by explaining what conditions would have to hold for you to say that one is doing something consciously, and then explain exactly why you think that these conditions do not hold in your examples.

I don’t play bridge, so let’s talk about chess. Generally a vast amount of subconscious processing takes place when I’m playing chess, but it seems to me that on some occasions the crucial processing is entirely conscious. For example, say that I’m playing postal chess (so I have lots of time to analyze), and I’m looking at a late endgame position with bishop and knight against a lone king; I’ve already used 48 moves since the last capture, so I have to mate in two or the game is drawn. To make things interesting, lets suppose that my life depends on my winning the game. Given the huge stakes, I decide to look at every single possible move for the next three moves and do the standard game-theoretic analysis to determine whether I have a forced mate in two, and if so what its first move is. How does it even make sense to say that none of this logical processing (every bit of which I’m conscious of) is conscious?

What would you make of it if someone said, “This robbery in the middle of Times Square seems to have occurred in New York City, but it really took place in Yonkers”? Well, I find your statements here just as baffling.

Sure. I can think faster than I can talk, and when I “narrate the process to myself” this unavoidably slows the process down to talking speed. How does this show that the process is unconscious?

But consciousness is not an “organ” or a “device in the body”. No one really understands the connection between the mind and the body, but consciousness seems to be inextricably linked to certain kinds of processes in the brain. While these processes (or rather the capability for them) was presumably selected for, that doesn’t mean that consciousness itself was selected for. So arguments based on evolution are out of place, at least until we have a much better understanding of the relationship between consciousness and the brain.

I really don’t know what you’re talking about. Of course consciousness can’t think; consciousness is where thinking takes place. It’s not at all clear that consciousness has a “job”. And I have no idea what you mean by saying that “its job is to provide an ‘I’ for the organism.” What does “providing an ‘I’” mean? How does consciousness “enhance [one’s] ability to compete”. I can imagine an organism just like me except that it lacks consciousness. It seems to me that if the physical processes in its brain were exactly the same as those in my brain, it would do exactly the same things that I do, and hence would compete just as effectively as me.

Again, I have no idea what it could mean to say that I am under the illusion that I am thinking consciously. Am I conscious of this illusion? If not, in what sense does this illusion exist? In what sense can “I” be experiencing it? But if I am conscious of it, then by definition I am having at least one conscious thought – namely, the thought that I am thinking consciously.

In short, it seems to me that, in order for any of this to make sense, you have to use terms like “conscious” and “consciousness” in an extremely nonstandard way. And I can see no benefit in doing so; it just impedes communication. You end up contradicting practically everything that anyone else says about consciousness, to no apparent purpose.

However, this is getting pretty far off both the topic of this thread and the “Existence of God” topic. If you want to pursue it, perhaps it should be moved to the “philosophy” forum.

Vorkosigan

Vorkosigan:

Again, I have no idea what it could mean to say that I am under the illusion that I am thinking consciously. Am I conscious of this illusion? If not, in what sense does this illusion exist? In what sense can “I” be experiencing it? But if I am conscious of it, then by definition I am having at least one conscious thought – namely, the thought that I am thinking consciously.

In short, it seems to me that, in order for any of this to make sense, you have to use terms like “conscious” and “consciousness” in an extremely nonstandard way. And I can see no benefit in doing so; it just impedes communication. You end up contradicting practically everything that anyone else says about consciousness, to no apparent purpose.


BD, I am suffering from tendonitis and my posting rate is about to plummet. I would have liked to haven given you a much longer reply, but my good right arm is no longer a good right arm.

I am not using "consciousness" in a non-standard way. I am using it as it is used by cognitive science researchers. Perhaps you are not familiar with such a usage.

Please do me a favor. Check out Ornstein's The Evolution of Consciousness and read chapter 13, "how the brain knows what you're doing before you do." That chapter discusses...

Are automatic mechanisms, unavailable to consciousness, running the show, allowing us but the illusion that we are in control? Maybe, and for those who still doubt...

Both you and Taffy have an incorrect picture of consciousness, how it functions, and what its role is. Our internal experience of our own thinking does not give a true picture of how it actually works, no matter how vivid the experience.

Unfortunately, this is about the longest post I can manage, I apologize most profusely, but I must bow out of this thread.

Vorkosigan

Taffy Lewis

bd-from-kg,

This thread quickly became a discussion of which theory of perception is correct. I have merely responded to the charges that direct realism is false. I objected to your statements about perception because I believe they are false.

I gave a second link to the paper "Theories of Perception" because anyone who believes the direct realist and representationalist accounts of perception are simply "two different ways of talking about how we interact with “reality”" has a fundamental misunderstanding of these theories.

At any rate, here is one more quote from Searle which supports a direct realist account:

I believe belief in God is best compared to belief in the physical world because particular experiences of any kind are the result of a belief forming mechanism (or disposition or practice). Belief forming mechanisms are our means of acquiring information about some segment of reality. On the one hand we have:

(SP) Sense perception is a reliable means of forming beliefs about our immediate physical environment.

And on the other hand we have:

(TP) Theistic perception is a reliable means of forming beliefs about God.

I claim that if God exists then he is at least as fundamental a feature of reality as the physical world since he is supposed to be its creator an sustainer. Therefore our access to facts about God will be as fundamental as our access to the physical world.

Just as we cannot give a noncircular justification for belief that SP is true we cannot give a noncircular justification for belief that TP is true. Since we rationally believe in the existence of the physical world and yet we cannot give a noncircular justification of SP, we can rationally believe in the existence of God without giving a noncircular justification for TP. Treating them differently would be an application of a double standard. This point is related to a comment you made about Alston and my claim that we know that the physical world exists. I said: "I think it is obvious that we know the physical world exists. It seems crazy to suggest otherwise."

You said:

Then you quoted Gale as saying:

The simple fact is that Alston does believe that we know the physical world exists and yet claims that we cannot show or demonstrate or justify in a noncircular way the claim that our senses are reliable. Also, I'd be interested to know where you acquired the statistic that most philosophers deny that we know there is a physical world.

Alston is well known for his contributions to epistemology and in particular something he refers to as "level confusions". For example, he distinguishes between proposition p, S knows p, and S knows that S knows p. Gale is pointing out that Alston has demonstrated that we cannot know that SP is reliable. This is very different from claiming that we do not (or cannot) know that there is a physical world. On one hand we have "I know that p." and on the other we have "I know that I know that p."

With reference to knowledge of God, in his essay "Knowledge of God", Alston writes :

Similarly, in his essay "On Knowing That We Know: the application to religious knowledge", while discussing his preferred theory of knowledge, a reliabilist account, Alston writes:

The "tour de force" which Gale refers to is Chapter 3 of Alston's book Perceiving God which Alston expanded into a book titled The Reliability of Sense Perception.

My point about the moon was that it is not confirmed by separate sensory modalities. For the most part, people have believed in the existence of the moon because of their sight. It seems silly to require that some other sensory modality must confirm our visual experiences of the moon before we can reasonably trust them. So even if this type of "cross-check" is absent in the case of experiences of God it would have little force. At least, not unless you want to deny that people have reasonably believed in the existence of the moon where that belief is based entirely upon visual experiences.

Next, you said:

If by "merely matters of linguistics" you mean to say that direct realism and representationalism are just two different ways of saying the same thing, then you are wrong. The paper I referred to explains the differences very well and philosophers haven't simply been arguing about ways of speaking. Further, with regard to the author's quote above, the author was merely saying that the representationalist view seems to handle hallucinations better than the direct realist view. But he goes on in the remainder of the essay to give a direct realist reponse.

Next, you say:

Yet at the beginning of the post, you said:

I wouldn't characterize this as an obsession, but you seem to focus the discussion on the question of how best to understand perception at least as much as I do. And this despite your claims that you will accept a direct realist account just for the sake of argument.

Next, you say:

I'll refer to the quote of Searle given above. Also, it seems that your view is incapable of distinguishing between the conscious elements and the nonconscious elements that are involved in perception. The idea that nonconscious objects such as the unconscious elements of your brain are "interpreting" information is nonsense. Nothing that isn't conscious can be said to "interpret" anything. Interpretation is a matter of what something means and meaning something is dependent on consciousness. Just as thoughts are necessarily conscious so are "interpretations". It is a misuse of the term to refer to unconscious interpretations. Vorkosigan is consistent here. The view implies such claims as "You NEVER EVER think consciously." or "THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS A 'CONSCIOUS' INFERENCE." If your position entails such claims then there is something seriously wrong with your view.

I will refer you to the Searle quote again. Directly perceiving an object is not inconsistent with a detailed causal account of the necessary conditions for theistic or sensory perception.

Next, you say:

You have again violated your earlier claim to accept a direct realist account for the sake of argument. Also, perception is not a matter of constructing the best explanation for sensory experiences and thus concluding that they are best explained by postulating physical objects. There is no need to appeal to some hidden process of weighing and judging explanations such as you endorse. We directly perceive our immediate environment on the basis of sensory perception. Formulating hypotheses and applying epistemic principles are conscious processes. Once again, directly perceiving our environment is perfectly compatible with a detailed causal account of how the brain allows us to do this.

Next, you say:

Consider your claim that "the conceptual framework that I call my ontology was constructed to account for my experiences and make predictions about future ones.". Either it is or it is not the case that you think this view corresponds to how things are. You also say, "But that does not mean that it actually corresponds to the way things "really" are..". If your views of perception are among what you take to be "the way things "really" are" then you can't think this view actually corresponds to how things "really" are. Your position is self-contradictory.

If you don't even believe that your conception of the world corresponds to how things are then it is no wonder that you don't believe God exists.

Next, you say:

Again, you have abandoned your earlier claim to adopt a direct realist account of perception for the sake of argument. What you want to say is that we don't have direct access to the world so there must be some hidden process of forming and judging explanatory hypotheses. (Presumably, the hypothesis that there is a hidden process of forming and judging explanatory hypotheses is at least a conscious hypothesis. So you are doing consciously what nonconscious processes were doing in the case of the hidden processes. Do we know this directly or do we need to postulate a hidden process to explain this too?)

The distinction I have been insisting upon is between directly knowing something on one hand and inferring something on the other. This is the same as a distinction between being directly aware of something on one hand and postulating the existence of some entity or entities to explain what you are directly aware of.

In the case of perception of God, we are directly aware of God's presence and activity. God is not invoked to explain things we are aware of.

You seem to want us to believe that we are directly aware of our sensory experiences and that there is this hidden process of hypothesizing and judging that justifies our believing that there exists various physical objects. But if you will permit direct awareness in the case of your sensory experiences why not allow for direct awareness of the physical world. I think the reason you accept such a contradictory position can be found in the comments by Searle. You think there is an incompatibility between directly perceiving the physical world and the existence of a causal account of how we sense things. But this is fallacious.

Most of the rest of your post is devoted to arguing that theism isn't a good explantory hypothesis. Since my claims have been about theistic experience as a form of perception and not as an explanatory hypothesis I'll just ignore those points.

[ August 22, 2002: Message edited by: Taffy Lewis ]</p>

bd-from-kg

Taffy Lewis:

You have a knack for extending an argument to cover about every possible remotely related subject, so this post is unavoidably pretty long.

1. Some epistemological issues.

OK, I concede that Alston believes that we “know”, in his sense of “know”, that the physical world exists. But he clearly doesn’t believe that we “know” it in my sense of “know”. It’s clear from the quotations you provide that we mean very different things by “know”. In fact, I find his usage quite bizarre.

Let’s look at the first passage that you quoted:

Now let’s look at the implications of this. Suppose that I know of a hundred sources such that one of them is quite reliable (anything it says has nearly a 100% probability of being true), but anything any of the others claim is completely unreliable: it has a 50/50 chance of being true. Unfortunately, I don’t know which one is reliable. Now I choose a different claim made by each one (all of them independent of the others); call them P1, P2, ..., P100. I believe all of the answers on the basis of the following reasoning: Of the claims made by the unreliable sources, I can expect half of them to be true, while I can expect the claim made by the reliable source to be almost certainly true. Thus I can expect (statistically) slightly more than half of the claims to be true. In other words, the probability of any one claim being true is slightly better than 50/50. So it’s rational to believe each of these claims.

But now suppose that someone were to ask me whether I knew that one of the claims (say P45) is true. Obviously I would answer “Of course not. Based on what I know, the probability of its being true is only a tad better than 50/50 – not nearly enough to say that I know it.” But according to Alston, if it happens that source 45 is one of the reliable sources, I’d be wrong; I do know that P45 is true, even though I have no idea that I know it, and in fact strongly believe that I don’t know it.

In other words, Alston would say that I know one of P1 through P100 even though I have no idea which of them I know. What kind of “knowledge” is this?

Thus according to Alston, I know something even though I strongly believe that I don’t know it, and I can know that I know one of a bunch of propositions even though I have no idea which one I know. As I said earlier, this is bizarre; it is surreal. It makes a mockery of the concept of “knowing” something.

[Note: Actually you should have said “reliable” rather than “true”.]

This is the “we’re all in the same boat” argument. Since no beliefs about the external world are justified (a circular justification being no justification at all) anything goes. It’s just as rational to believe in the Easter Bunny, or that little green men from Mars that no one else can see are following me everywhere, as it is to believe that I have two hands. This argument is the end of all rational argument; to accept it is to embrace madness.

Also, although it is of little interest to me, it might matter to you that (according to Gale at least) Alston does not make this argument. What he actually argues is that we have no epistemic justification for believing that SP is reliable, but we do have a pragmatic justification. I agree with this, but I think that even his pragmatic justification is defective. But no matter, I have my own; you can find it on <a href="http://iidb.org/cgi-bin/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic&f=21&t=000384" target="_blank">this thread</a>. As the OP points out, this kind of justification does not extend in any way, shape or form, to believing in God. Or, for that matter, to believing that TPE’s are really “perceptions of God”.

Curiously, as Gale points out, Alston’s argument that it is pragmatically rational to believe that a particular type of MP is reliable can be applied to other, incompatible types of MP. And all of these arguments are sound, even though the beliefs involved contradict one another. Thus, unlike the argument that it is pragmatically rational to believe that SP is reliable (where any benefits depend on its actually being reliable) the argument that it is pragmatically rational to believe that MP is reliable is disconnected from its actual reliability: the benefits of such a belief can accrue even if it is completely unreliable – i.e., even if all of the resulting beliefs are false. Thus in the final analysis the argument (as Alston himself admits) is not an argument for the existence of God, but for believing in the existence of God. In other words, it’s a cousin of Pascal’s Wager.

In any case, unless you seriously intend to pursue the “we’re not justified in believing anything anyway, so why not believe in God” argument (which will bring this thread to a quick end) all of this is far afield from the original subject. If you want to pursue these kinds of epistemological questions, start a thread in the Philosophy forum.

2. Direct realism

In your latest post you claim in several places that I “violated my earlier claim to accept a direct realist account for the sake of argument”. That’s not true, but I admit to being a little sloppy with my terminology in one or two places an a way that may have led you to think so. I’ll explain in a bit. But first, let me be clear about just what I committed to in agreeing to “base all of my statements about perception on the ‘direct realist’ account”.

Unfortunately “direct realism” means different things to different people. However, since you cited it three times as a good reference, I assume that you accept the definition given in Larry Sanger’s Philosophy of Perception article. Here it is:

That’s it. That’s the whole thing. The immediate objects of perception are external objects, etc., as opposed to sense data, mental images, or any thing else in the mind. This is what I committed to.

The article continues:

In other words, it’s naïve (in fact, obviously false) to suppose that the world is exactly (or sometimes even remotely) the way we perceive it to be. As Sanger puts it, it is possible to misperceive the world. But what does this mean? How can it make sense, for example, to say that one perceives a rock but misperceives it as a bear? After all, either one is seeing (perceiving) a rock or one isn’t, right?

Actually two distinct meanings of “perceive” are being used here. The first meaning is “to become aware of directly through any of the senses, especially sight or hearing”. This is the usual meaning in discussions of the philosophy of perception. But a second meaning is “to achieve understanding of; apprehend”. [Note: These definitions are from the American Heritage Dictionary.] What Sanger is saying is that one might “become directly aware of” a rock by seeing it, but “achieve a misunderstanding of, misapprehend” what one is seeing.

Thus, even in the direct realist account of perception there is a crucial distinction between perceiving (i.e., seeing) a rock (sense 1) and perceiving that it’s a rock (sense 2). You have to somehow get from seeing a rock to perceiving that it’s a rock. There’s a further process involved here beyond the mere perception (i.e., seeing) of the rock. And this process is of course subject to error: you might perceive a rock, but perceive that it’s a bear – or in other words, misinterpret the perception of the rock as being a perception of a bear. This is the process that Vorkosigan and I have been talking about at some length, and whose very existence you seem determined to close your eyes to.

It’s worth noting that, according to the direct realist account, it’s also possible to have something that seems to be a perception but isn’t. (Hallucinations are the obvious example.) The reason for this is that the object of any actual perception must be something in the “external world,” and since things like hallucinations do not have any such object, they cannot be called perceptions. Thus the subject needs to interpret any experience that appears to be a perception the same way that he needs to interpret an actual perception, since determining whether the experience is an actual or only an apparent perception is a crucial part of the interpretation.

To retain this distinction but still keep things reasonably concise, I propose to use the following terminology. The term “perceptual experience” (PE) will refer to any apparent perception. Similarly, “sensory perceptual experience” (SPE) and “theistic perceptual experience” (TPE) will refer to experiences that appear to be sensory or theistic perceptions, respectively.

Now let’s go to one of the places where I was a little sloppy. In fact, I was tripped up by the very ambiguity in the meaning of “perceive” that I noted above. Here it is:

What I should have said was: “When one directly perceives a tree, one does not “directly perceive” that it’s a tree. One’s perception that it’s a tree is a very different thing from one’s perception of the tree....”

Later I was again a bit careless. Here’s the paragraph:

Instead of saying “When you perceive a tree what happens is precisely that your brain concludes ...” I should have said, “But one does not acquire a belief about the tree merely by perceiving it, but by perceiving that it’s a tree. And what happens when you perceive that it’s a tree is precisely that your brain concludes ...”

At this point it should be clear that I have no quarrel whatever with anything that Searle says in the stuff that you quoted, nor does anything that I’ve said conflict with the direct realist account of perception.

3. Interpreting PE’s.

As Vorkosigan and I have explained at some length in earlier posts, interpreting a PE is a very complex process. In the first place, it is based on a conceptual framework (an ontology) that was constructed to account for one’s past experiences, to make predictions about future ones, and to interpret new ones as they occur. This is perfectly obvious to anyone who takes the time to think about it, and it is not controversial. You do not come into the world with a magical ability to interpret certain sensory experiences as “mama” or “food,” much less anything more complicated. You learn that certain perceptions tend to be correlated with one another, and in particular that certain ones are typically followed by certain other ones. Step by step you construct a conceptual scheme which interprets (many of) these patterns and regularities as being “caused” by things that “objectively exist” or are part of the “external world”. This provides you with a framework for “understanding,” or making sense of , your experiences. You predict new experiences by assuming that the patterns and regularities observed in the past will tend to hold in the future. Of course this is oversimplified, but it will do for purposes of discussion.

Now once a reasonably good conceptual framework is in place, interpreting new sensory perceptions is typically a relatively simple matter. Your brain compares the new sensory data to a vast database of previous data, noting similarities and differences, searching for a ‘best match’ and concluding that this data is probably coming from the same source (or same type of source). All this normally occurs subconsciously, although in a few cases at the end of the “automatic” processing there may be more than one “candidate” for the “best fit,” and the final decision is left as a decision to be made consciously.

How do I know that such “hidden processes” must be occurring? Because what I’m directly aware of, in the case of SPE’s, is obviously not the raw sensory input. For example, say that I go to a Julian Bream concert. What I hear (i.e., what is presented to my consciousness) is a guitar playing a melody and perhaps some countermelodies or a rhythmic accompaniment. This is clearly not the raw sensory input, so my brain must have processed the original input extensively and is presenting the output of this process to my consciousness.

The description below of what happens when I “read a post” is also a nice illustration of this point. Actually almost any SPE is a good example.

Even in simple cases it’s quite possible that the interpretation arrived at will be wrong. It’s even possible that there was no perception at all; that the part of your brain responsible for this processing mistook some internal brain state as being (or as being the result of) a sensory perception. It’s also possible, of course, that the processing can interpret some aspect of the sensory input as the result of a perception of some external entity (like a physical object) when in fact no such entity exists (as when one “sees” a rainbow or a mirage, or a really good holographic projection.) But ordinarily, when you perceive a familiar object or scene you can be reasonably confident that your brain will interpret it “correctly” – i.e., it will find the “best match” in your database.

But what if this processing is not able to find anything like a good match? In other words, what if the PE is well outside of your previous experience? Well, two things can happen: (1) The processing interprets it as something familiar, ignoring the differences, often even suppressing them in what it outputs to your consciousness. This is very common. Or (2) It interprets it as something really new. In that case you’re forced to modify your conceptual framework in a significant way to accommodate the new experience. The chances that the new addition to your conceptual framework corresponds well to the new thing (if any) that was perceived – that is, that it will generate new predictions, or allow you to understand further perceptions of the new thing, are very low. But if you keep perceiving the new thing repeatedly, under different circumstances (e.g., from different angles, with different lighting, when it’s “on” and “off” or “awake” and “asleep” or whatever, depending on its nature) your conception of it will (hopefully) gradually start to correspond more closely to the thing itself.

Clearly the interpretation of a really different kind of PE is fraught with error. It’s common to interpret really different PE’s as actual perceptions when they really aren’t. And even if you’re really perceiving something of a sort that you haven’t perceived before, the chances that your conception of this new kind of thing will correspond to its actual nature after just one or two PE’s are extremely slim.

OK, this is basically my account of how perception (sensory perception at least) leads to beliefs about the “external world”). Now obviously this account seriously undermines (to say the least) the claim that TPE’s provide a reasonable basis for believing in God. An advocate of this position, if he accepts this account, has to argue either that (1)unlike the interpretation of really different SPE’s, the interpretation of TPE’s (which are certainly far different from any SPE) is unproblematic – that it is not fraught with error at all, or (2) that unlike SPE’s, TPE’s do not require interpretation – that they contain within themselves the information that they really are perceptions, and the information as to the nature of what is being perceived. Unfortunately, once one understands the nature of SPE’s, both of these positions are completely implausible. And the latter claim implies that TPE’s are so utterly different in nature from SPE’s as to invalidate any argument based on any supposed analogy between them. (E.g., “Sense perception is a reliable means of forming beliefs about our immediate physical environment, and in the same [or a similar] way, theistic perception is a reliable means of forming beliefs about God. Treating them differently would be an application of a double standard.”.)
So it’s not surprising that many advocates of TPE as a basis for theistic belief dispute this account of the nature of SPE’s. In fact, you’ve disputed it on several grounds. I will now examine each of these in turn.

A. Verbal quibbles

In at least two places you objected to my description of the subconscious processes involved in interpreting a perception on the grounds that I used terms that can only properly be applied to conscious processes”

And later:

No doubt, though you didn’t say so explicitly, you also object to my applying terms like “conclude,” “weigh,” and “judge” to nonconscious process on the same grounds.

Now this restriction on the usage of such terms is already obsolete. We speak of SQL and LISP “interpreters”, of optical character “recognition”, of chess programs comparing different positions, of programs that formulate proofs of mathematical theorems by applying heuristic principles, etc. It’s obvious that computers can do things that can most easily be described as “formulating hypotheses.” The same applies to all of the terms that you object to applying to nonconscious processes. The reason is obvious: the things that computers are doing (or will soon be doing) in these cases can most conveniently be described in these terms; there are no other terms available for talking about such things that are not absurdly cumbersome.

Here’s an illustration. There are already robots that can take simple instructions like “take the round object from the floor and place it on the table” and execute them – that is, they will take the round object from the floor and place it on the table. It’s very convenient to say that the robot is “interpreting” the instructions. If you insist that this term cannot be used in this context, how do you propose to describe what it’s doing? Doesn’t “interpret” capture an essential aspect of what it’s doing that’s hard to capture in any simple way without using this term?

To get back to the kind of process that I had in mind, consider what happened when I read your post. What I actually saw was a bunch of white and black spots (pixels) on the screen. My brain subconsciously interpreted them as a series of letters, and then interpreted them as words. Finally, it translated the words into sounds. It was these words and sounds that were presented to my consciousness, not a million or so pixels. Certainly the process of converting all those pixels into words and sounds was not a conscious process! If you insist on saying that by brain didn’t “really” interpret the pattern of pixels as a series of words and sounds, how do you propose to describe this process?

Thus I can only interpret these objections as pointless verbal quibbles.

B. How do we know that such “hidden processes” exist?

You claim that the existence of subconscious processes by means of which we interpret SPE’s is just a matter of conjecture, and pointless conjecture at that:

Well, I if one wants to arrive at a reasonable account, consistent with logic and evidence, of how we derive beliefs about the external world from SPE’s, it is necessary to postulate such processes.

First, as noted earlier, we can logically deduce that they must be occurring from the difference between the sensory inputs and what is presented to our consciousness. Something must be bridging this gap; obviously that something must be occurring in the brain, and obviously we are not conscious of it. Second, scientists have been studying the brain intensely for some time now, and have actually identified a number of the subprocesses involved. As a simple example, it is now known that “edge detection” and “motion detection” algorithms are carried out in the optic nerve, before the signal even reaches the brain proper.

C. Supposed inconsistencies and contradictions

Some of your arguments seem to be intended to bring out inconsistencies or contradictions in my position. For example, you say:

There are several misunderstandings here. First, I do not say that we are directly aware of our sensory experiences, at least not in any sense that would make this argument make sense. I certainly do not say that when we see a tree we are “directly aware” that we are seeing a tree. I say that we directly perceive the tree, not we directly perceive that it’s a tree. As I pointed out earlier, two very different sense of “perceive” are involved here. Also, I do not say that the mere existence of a “process of interpreting and judging” (i.e., of interpreting) justifies our beliefs about the external world; I say only that it results in beliefs about it.

For this argument to make any sense, we would have to be directly aware of the nature of what we perceive. (E.g., when we see a tree, we would have to be directly aware that we’re seeing a tree – i.e., that the object of the perception is an entity with such-and-such a nature). No serious philosopher believes this, because it’s obviously false. This is “naïve realism,” or something very like it.

You also gave an argument that seems to be intended to show that it is somehow logically inconsistent to adopt the “hidden processes” hypothesis. (Actually I’m not sure I understand the point, but here’s the argument):

My answer to this is:

(i) Yes, I’m conscious of this hypothesis, so by definition it’s a conscious hypothesis.

(ii) The claim that this is a conscious hypothesis does not entail a claim that I am doing anything consciously. In particular, it doesn’t imply that either the process by which I came up with this hypothesis, or the process by which I came to accept it, was conscious.

(iii) If either of these processes was conscious, it’s true that it resembles the “hidden” processes by which I interpret sensory perceptions in one respect: that it was a cognitive process. So what? At most this would show only that there can be both conscious and nonconscious cognitive processes. Not exactly earth-shaking.

You also claim to see a contradiction of some kind in my position here:

Again it’s not clear to me what contradiction you think you see. As best I can make out, when I say that the fact that my ontology accounts for my experiences doesn’t mean that it corresponds to the way things “really” are, you take this to mean that I think that it doesn’t correspond to the way things really are. This is an elementary fallacy; the fact that I’m aware that I could be wrong, or even that I’m almost certainly wrong in some respects, doesn’t’ mean that I think I am wrong in any specific respect. But in any case you’re mixing apples and oranges. My ontology consists of the conceptual framework that I have constructed to account for my perceptual experiences and predict future ones. More precisely, it consists of the elements of this conceptual scheme that I think of as having “objective existence” – that is, that exist independently of me: of whether I perceive them or even whether I believe that they exist. In other words, it is my picture of the “external world” or “real world”. My belief that I have constructed this conceptual framework is obviously not part of this framework. Thus to say that I can’t know that my ontology corresponds to the actual external world (assuming that such a thing exists) is not to say that I can’t know that I constructed it more or less in the manner described above. There is no self-contradiction.

Conclusion: The reasons for postulating “hidden processes” involved in interpreting SPE’s are overwhelming, and the arguments against them have little or no weight. So if TPE’s are even remotely like SPE’s, the impression that the subject often has that he is “perceiving God” is the output of such processes. And considering how radically different the content and apparent object of a TPE is from any SPE, there is no reason to trust this output and every reason to question it. On the other hand the claim that TPE’s involve a “direct awareness” that they are true perceptions, and of the nature of the object of the perception, is a claim that TPE’s are unlike anything else in human experience. It is impossible even to form any coherent conception of the nature of such an experience. It is impossible to conceive how the subject can tell the difference between an impression of the nature of the object of perception that is an intrinsic part of the PE itself (whatever that could mean) and one that is the product of the same kind of hidden processes involved in interpreting SPE’s. So there is no rational reason to believe that the subjects can tell the difference, and hence no rational reason to believe that TPE’s are in fact perceptions of God.

Note: I have no intention of producing any more 5,000+ word posts on this thread. Ths subject is interesting, but not taht interesting. Make your reply as long as you like, but please indicate the one or two issues you consider crucial or move towards wrapping things up.

bd-from-kg

Vorkosigan:

Sorry to hear about your tendonitis. Very painful.

I’d like to read Ornstein’s book, but I live in the boonies and it is not available at any library that I have access to. Just the same, I’ll try to get a copy.

Meanwhile, there’s something I don’t understand about your claim that:

I don’t see how it is possible to arrive at this sort of conclusion scientifically. After all, consciousness is not directly accessible to scientific study. The only way that a scientist can have any idea what’s going on in someone’s consciousness is to ask him. (Or, if he uses himself as a subject, he can rely on introspection.) But this methodology implicitly assumes that the subject himself has a reasonably good idea of what’s going on in his consciousness; otherwise there’s no reason to trust anything that he reports. For example, to determine whether or not Smith consciously inferred X, doesn’t one ultimately have to depend on Smith’s reporting of what’s going on in his own mind? But if so, how do you justify contradicting Smith’s report that he consciously inferred X? If he’s wrong about something as basic as this, on what grounds can you trust anything he says about what’s going on in his consciousness? And if you can’t, how can you justify any conclusions at all about what’s going on in his consciousness?

In short, it seems to me that this sort of claim is self-refuting.

I should point out that none of this has anything to do with the argument against Taffy Lewis’s thesis that “theistic perception” is evidence of the existence of God. Whether the kinds of process we’ve both talked about are almost entirely subconscious or entirely subconscious is really irrelevant here.