h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

(though I kinda think I am . . .)

az

anyhoodle, good to have at least one woman on this thread to keep all you guys thinkin straight

Ok - shall shut up now!

az

Sorry . . . just a knee-jerk reaction: misquote The Life Of Brian on all possible occasions.

"He's not the messiah, he's a very naughty boy....", is Phred.

he who hurts with 1 punch

So I'll take your name off the list for the t-shirts, Recumbenman?

az

-p747

Anybody. If I'm not real, then your not reading this. (can't resist the temptation of the smartassed comment)

-p748

Nope, no confusion there. How to say this.....I experience the ride, I percieve the speed. Experience to me would include a multitude of things related to, yet seperate from perception. A few examples would include the interperitation of the various perceptions, abstract and tangent thoughts occuring simultaniously with the perceptions, further reflection upon the perceptions after they have concluded. These are but a few, and impact the greater experience.

Response to Chai's p752. I've heard of that idea of the ever-changing 'I'. I disagree. That would presume the existance of time outside of the now. While I don't want to get into arguements in complex physics, I have never known 'past' and have not seen 'future', but have only experienced a 'now'. The past is but a dream, the future never happened, there is only now. While I may be a different person from who I might have been five years ago, I am still I. My use of the christian biblical 'I am that I am' was in reference to the qabalistic interperitation of the statement, in other words, I am completely unexplainable; for who one is, truly, is quite too complex for mere language. It was also a tongue in cheek response to AZ's previous post

Interesting side note: I've been mispronouncing R'man's name, basically stressing the syllable after the one supposed to be. ie: recumBENTman, rather than reCUMbentman. Silly me.

Phred Head

OK then, Sneaky. I think you're using language in an odd way. So I'm going to ask you a question that might just sort this out. What is the difference between 'blindsight' and actually 'seeing'? If you try to use the terms we've been using here, I think my point will become (daren't say 'blindingly'!) obvious.

toxx

From what I just read (I google searched 'blindsight') the difference between blindsight and actually seeing is brain damage, which I will not discuss.

I tried the test (to try to understand), and scored exactly as I should have, above 90% for seen, right at 50% for might have seen, and below 10% for did not see, which proves nothing.

I don't follow your logic, please explain.

OK, Sneaky. Actually I meant the difference in phenomenology or the what-it's-likeness as I think Noggin calls it. Blindsight is perception. Normal vision is perception accompanied by belief that one perceives. Dreaming and certain other of your examples seem to me to be believing that one perceives without any associated perception.

The blindsight phenomenon helps us to put the knife in between perception and belief. No doubt though, you will dispute my blindsight/vision/dreaming analysis and, if so, I would ask you to do better.

toxx

Blindsight is perception when the part of the brain that...that's right, I won't discuss brain damage. I simply don't know enough (or hardly at all, for that matter), but belief has nothing to do with blindsight.

I do appreciate the arguement you make. It does make sense, but I disagree with the idea of using brain damage in the arguement. Perception and belief may just be semantically the same (outside of religion, which is basically belief without perception). If I cannot believe what it is that my senses tell me, then I can believe nothing. Also, the point of my including dreams and hallucinations in perceptions was to find a logical path that would seperate them. I know that dreams and hallucinations are not real, but how do I logically seperate them from more veridical perception? This is not rhetorical, I have no answers.

In short, I agree with most of what you say (when explained), Toxxin, but just want to know the why of it. Examples are all well and good, but I obviously follow different logic then you do, so to better understand you I need explainations.

I take it, Sneaky, that your key question is what can you trust if not your own perceptions? I shall suggest why you cannot trust them and also what you might prefer to rely on.

Sometimes one sense tells you one thing, and a different sense something else. Cross your first two fingers and touch a small rounded object and touch will tell you that there are two objects although vision will tell a different story. Hold a stick partly underwater and it looks bent although touch (as well as removing it) will tell you that it remains straight. When you hear a certain speech sound from someone that you can see, you will 'hear' whatever fits best both the sound and the mouth movements. This can be done artificially on film and is very convincing.

There are many visual and auditory illusions that we know about. I just don't see how anyone can assume that these things are veridical; especially when they clash with other sensory modalities!

However, what is more convincing is agreement over sensory modalities, over time (various viewpoints, for example) and with what other people say. Some people's senses are more acute than others. So what we tend to believe is often a social thing, although we aren't normally particularly aware of it.

Phew, that's me about worn out for now!

toxx

I take it, Sneaky, that your key question is what can you trust if not your own perceptions? I shall suggest why you cannot trust them and also what you might prefer to rely on.

Sometimes one sense tells you one thing, and a different sense something else. Cross your first two fingers and touch a small rounded object and touch will tell you that there are two objects although vision will tell a different story. Hold a stick partly underwater and it looks bent although touch (as well as removing it) will tell you that it remains straight. When you hear a certain speech sound from someone that you can see, you will 'hear' whatever fits best both the sound and the mouth movements. This can be done artificially on film and is very convincing.

There are many visual and auditory illusions that we know about. I just don't see how anyone can assume that these things are veridical; especially when they clash with other sensory modalities!

However, what is more convincing is agreement over sensory modalities, over time (various viewpoints, for example) and with what other people say. Some people's senses are more acute than others. So what we tend to believe is often a social thing, although we aren't normally particularly aware of it. This social aspect clearly doesn't apply to dreams, for example. Neither are you normally free in dreams to do the tests you might normally try. It is also common to be dreaming one is in a certain place etc only to wake and discover that this was not, in fact, the case.

Phew, that's me about worn out for now!

toxx

Ok, I think I might maybe have possible understood some of that, or not.

1. Perceptions may clash, making them unreliable. This begs for logical inference. Using the stick metaphor, when the stick appears to be bent while partly submerged in a clear container of water, logically it would still have to be straight, as it was so before partial submertion as well as after, also taking into consideration other perceptory senses, such as touch. This would be the logical test of perception.

2. Verification of perception by others solidifies belief in the veridical nature of the particular perception. Since dreams and hallucinations (appearently my favorite examples) cannot be verified by another, they must be false. This would be the social test of perception. (though I'm resistant to this, being a rather solitary person by nature)

2.1 In dreams there are those that are free to do as they please, I believe this is refered to as lucid dreaming, though I've never experienced it. I just assume that what is occuring is what is supposed to, sort of like while awake, but we all know what assumptions do. This would pass the first test, but not the second, making it false or not real. This bit is really just me being difficult.

3. Sensory illusions are just false? I seem to have fallen behind on this one, maybe it ties into #1. Personally I say that projections (ie: movies) are real only in the sense that the light forming the image can be said to be real (duality of the nature of light, being both particle and wave), as well as passing the first two tests of perception. The sound illusions elludes me for the moment. I have no logical means of determining the truthful nature of sound outside of the experimentally verifiable phsisical nature of sound waves. This would be the 'I ain't got a clue' test. Because, I just don't have a clue where you were heading with that one.

Thanks for the clarification, and the patience.

Cult of Phred, the Phred Heads?

Sneaky. By sensory illusions I refer to things like the Ames Room, Muller-Lyer illusion, even Wittgenstein's duck/rabbit. If you don't know and can't Google the kind of thing I mean, I'll find some links for you.

toxx

Thanks, now that I have some topics I can google all night long (or until the end of my shift). Unfortunately it is the end of my shift, so I won't be able to comment more until 2004.

Have a happy new year! (drink one for me, I'll be working)

<>

Dreaming is an area of great interest because its unreality is normally only perceived on waking from it. This is precisely the point of most Vedantins and Mahayana Buddhists, i.e. that our "normal" mundane perception is a dream-like reality, whose illusory nature is only perceived upon "awakening."

One of the key experiences of the "awakening" awareness is, at certain stages, the experience of deep sleep, ( normally an oblivious blank,) being perceived as a continuum of objectless awareness.

Logic says that awareness cannot exist except as "awareness of...." The experience of deep meditation ( and the attendant literature is full of accounts of this ) is precisely of awareness being of no thing other than awareness itself ( simple being .)

This state can co-exist with deep sleep, with dreaming, and with waking. It is recognised by the term "the silent witness" and such a state is termed as "witnessing." Some schools of advaita attempt to cultivate this witnessing as a means of "awakening."

In fact, the witnessing is a spontaneous concomitant of a certain aspect of "awakening."

What is interesting about Toxxin and Sneaky's exchange above is the relationship between perception and belief. When perception and belief tally, we call it reality.

Where does that leave one who perceives no "I"? No "I" is perceived, no belief in an "I" remains, so that one can put one's hand on one's heart and say "I" am not real, "I" do not exist.

You look at me and say, "That's rubbish, I can see you quite clearly, I can hit you on the head and you will feel it, I can shoot you and you'll be really dead. Or, who are you who is typing this paradoxical crap and dumping it onto hootoo?"

The truth of the matter is that different perceptions of reality can intertwine without negating each other. The reality of the "non-self" is not negated by the continuing reality of a physical entity, within which all the normal processes ( as mentioned a few entries back ) continue to operate. What has ceased is the process of self-identification with the physical entity.

This is not a bizarre belief, ( though you may be forgiven for thinking it so ) but a "real" perception. The self is "realized" as empty of substance, as no "thing." Hence all the habitual interactions and responses can be described as merely a constantly changing process. And mundane reality takes on a dream-like quality.

It sounds weird. At first it felt very strange indeed, but now it is an utterly unremarkable, "normal," mundane way of "being."

Chai.

To deduce anything from this observastion, as you do, requires a solipsistic position. It also makes a nonsense of the existence of anything unperceived or without beliefs of its own!

To turn the argument on it's head: this amounts to a refutation of the solipsistic position concerning anything but the self; which gets us precisely nowhere.

Best wishes 'four' the new year to all.

toxx

Happy New Year everybody!



az

It's interesting, really? Cool. I feel all inside now, or is that the gin? #10 really gets a man going.



I'm not so sure about that, or rather, that's what I've been saying all along. Most, however, would like to argure that if anything is real, then it's reality exists seperate from perception and belief, as Toxxin pointed out with the 'blindsight' example (I know I was being difficult, but there were a few things that lost me along the way).

Happy New Year! 2004 here we come (are you ready?)