That your claim is implicit (but clearly indicated by your question and your position, as well as your lack of any other reasoning related to the issue, and confirmed by your subsequent argumentation) does not provide the effortless deniability that this was your premise which you apparently wish it did. It continues to vex you that I am capable of ascertaining your thinking based on your statements (including your queries and requests), but what else could be the purpose of your statements (etc) other than to present your thinking? You seem to be highly focused on either claiming or suggesting that I could not be accurately interpreting your words, but the fact that you don't ever bother to provide any more accurate interpretation (instead merely insisting that my interpretation is inaccurate without justifying your insistence beyond unsubstantiated denials bordering on indignation) actually ratifies my perceptions about your meaning and your beliefs, rather than contradicting them.

I can't tell what your point is, or even whether you mean to agree with or dispute my comment.

>Incorrect - you are perceiving/interpreting that I am doing that. Please interpret my text literally, with a calm mind.

You are mistaken in believing (I cannot even abide by describing it as percieving/interpreting, it is more akin to wishing or hoping) that I have ever done anything other than interpret your text in any other way.

>Then you should abandon it.

I am not the one professing the false premise. I find it almost too hard to believe you aren't aware you failed to interpret which premise I was referencing. To clarify, it was your premise (unstated, but unavoidable, and by no means rebutted by your accusatory dismissal and semantic gamesmanship) that whether something is true is identical to whether it can be presented as pseudo-code (and, further, that whether you are convinced to believe it, by that effort or any other, is identical to whether it has been objectively (logically) proven).

>You do not actually possess knowledge of all ways in which a system could be rigged.

I do not need that for my position to be sound. You are the one that quantified the "rigging". I merely took your premise to be valid, and explained why it does not support the conclusion you expected it to.

>You are speculating, necessarily.

Indeed, necessarily so: as I seem to constantly have to remind you, all reasoning is speculation. Even the kind that relies on pseudo-code. But, in that way, you are merely speculating (but unnecessarily) that I am speculating, and have not provided any reason to believe my speculation is inaccurate even if your speculation is accurate. When will you abandon these semantic games, iiioiia? You just keep frustrating yourself more and more with every effort, by failing to even supply a coherent disputation of my conjectures.

>They are to some degree,

LOL.

>in that you do not possess omniscient knowledge of what is going on everywhere,

Examining a system doesn't require knowledge of what is going on "everywhere", only within the system. By suggesting that some putative systems are black boxes (but providing no reasoning or analysis to allow us to identify which ones are) you must necessarily be insinuating that the particular (though hypothetic) system being considered is a black box, or you are just babbling. Absolute knowledge of what is going on within the system could be assumed to be essential, yes, but by quantifying the proportion of 'rigging' so precisely (and, I might suggest, minutely) you have forced the idea that such knowledge is available as part of your premise. I simply took you at your word, which is to say, I interpreted your text literally and with a calm mind.

>Agree, but a system does have to be 100% reliable and uncorrupted to be 100% reliable and uncorrupted (which is what is being discussed here). Please do not move the goalposts.

I dispute your idealistic notion, with no movement of any imaginary goalposts necessary. Your assumption that any system can ever or must be 100% reliable is... braindead. A characteristic which is acceptable in pseudo-code, but not actual reasoning.

>Agree!! So then, please: provide us insight into the inner workings of your mind, if you have the nerve.

I do so with every word, despite your increasingly desperate contentions to the contrary. And you, also, like it or not, do the same: with every word you post, you reveal how braindead your reasoning is. It's nothing to be ashamed of; wishing that your thoughts had the precision and consistency of logic, pseudo-code, and computation is endemic in these postmodern times. But it is still an error, and both your reasoning and your attitude would be improved by abandoning it, as it is a vain hope and a dead end, philosophically speaking.

Thanks for your time. Hope it helps.

>In Bohr’s view, the world doesn’t have definite properties unless we’re looking at it.

The fundamental issue here (the relationship between philosophy and physics, quantum or otherwise) comes down to an over-generalized notion of "unless we are looking at it". Bohr was speaking from a predisposition of metaphysics, and this confuses many people. Every particle "looks at" every other particle it interacts with; the conscious effort of measurement is irrelevant. The moon does not cease to exist when we are not seeing it, but we cannot "know" that with absolute certainty, because any effort to determine if it is true would involve seeing whether the moon exists. This is a fundamental property of metaphysics (indeed, the only fundamental property of metaphysics, and the sum total of metaphysics) called metaphysical uncertainty. Nevertheless, to adopt the idea that the moon only exists because we see it is insane.

Physics doesn't challenge reality, it merely illuminates it; if your reality is challenged by quantum mechanics, it is because your beliefs about reality were inaccurate. The only thing challenged by the results of quantum physics is how we explain things; things were, are, and will be just as they always have been (objects emerge from some quantum interactions, life emerges from some objects, and consciousness emerges from some life) regardless of how we explain them.

>Can you show a pseudo-code representation of the logic you would use in isSystemRigged() to generate False for the proposition?

You are suggesting that whether something is true or false is the same as whether it can be shown to be true or false with pseudo-code. This is a false premise.

The only way your ".01% rigged" system would be "a rigged system" isn't that .01% of the system were a necessary and uncollectable operation component of 100% of the output of the system. Systems are not black boxes. A system doesn't have to be 100% reliable or uncorrupted to be reliable and uncorrupted. This isn't a matter simple enough for the literally braindead logic of pseudo-code or even more braindead real code. It requires reasoning, intelligence, and the ability to grasp the meaning (not merely a single definition) of words.

>f someone disagrees with you, would you be able to demonstrate that you are necessarily correct

Yes, but I would be unable to force them to admit this, or understand it, or even recognize it.

>If you bought a product that says "Pure Product A" on the label, but it is not in fact composed of 100% Product A but instead also contains .01% of a carcinogenic substance, would you consider the label to be objectively accurate (aka: True)?

You have begun a long and difficult journey toward understanding the difference between a system and a product. Best of luck; let me know if there is anything I can do to help.

a) False

b) yes

The only "truth inherent to language" is that it is language, and so is the word "truth". Modern philosophers who were ignorant of physics, and postmodern (or neopostmodern) philosophers who wish to ignore physics, try valiantly to formalize some metaphysical mechanism or method which would allow language to ascertain truth rather than simply enmatter truth, and continue to fail in that regard.

Paradox remains suspect by those philosophers because they desire truth (and metaphysics) to be bound by logic, which provides a precision and consistency of computational validity, and this seems, to them, the only reasonable meaning for truth. But being need not be described to be, and remains ineffable for that reason. The truth is that paradox (logically irresolvable conundrums) are far more meaningful than any tautology (which can be defined as anything which is not a teleology or a paradox), and understanding them, not resolving them, is the proper approach to reasoning. There is an unavoidable paradox intrinsic to the ineffability of being, which is indistinguishable from any other properly formed paradox in reasoning, and identical to metaphysical uncertainty: the unknown is just as unknown as the unknowable.

>We can’t have moral duties to do the impossible or control our involuntary functions.

Would that it were so. But this perspective trivializes morality, reducing all moral duties to a preference rather than an obligation. Self-determination is only a strong foundation for a theory of an ethical system if "ethics" is merely a quid pro quo voluntarily entered into (conscientiously and knowledgeably understood) by all participants, the very opposite of morality, though admittedly as close to it as a formal, conventional, or historic philosophical theory has gotten. But if historical systems of ethics had successfully deduced the nature of morality, philosophers would not still be discussing such things. "Normative ethics" is as inadequate for explaining what morality is, let alone elucidating its ramifications on how we should behave, as scriptural faith is.

>Some people have expressed concern that morality is a restriction on freedom, as if we are slaves.

Slaves are not morally bound, they are physically bound. Morality is a restriction on freedom, just not a restriction that prevents transgression.

>starting point for any moral system must be personal agency.

I agree with this premise, but I cannot discount the inverse; that any personal agency must have morality as it's starting point, in order to be at all distinguishable from lack of personal agency. Freedom by itself does "create" morality, it just doesn't differentiate between moral action and immoral action, without some premise beyond freedom itself; a "boundary", in your formulation. Your analysis confuses moral bounds for mere principle, and simultaneously appears to demand morality be a "limit" that somehow requires adherence beyond moral dictate, as if being immoral made an action physically impossible for the moral agent making moral judgements, even for itself and according to it's own moral strictures, to execute.

By focusing more-or-less exclusively on "freedom" as a psychological (philosophy related to contemplation of personal consciousness) matter while ignoring the more important and perilous sociological (philosophy related to laws and government) issue, the author has succeeded in saying precisely nothing. Even still, the essay is meaningful, but primarily as a counter-example to useful discourse on the subject.

>Morality exists only within the boundaries of freedom.

This stands as a reasonable premise, but not an informative one, since any useful discussion of freedom can only be considered within the bounds of morality. To ignore morality is to reduce freedom to "do what thou wilst", which does not merely epitomize immorality, or does not provide a reasonable, or even a logical, basis for any particular or even specific course of action. There are, after all, many things outside of the bounds of freedom or morality which limit our actions, in the real world.

>First, the experience of freedom is a certainty.

If only that were so, we wouldn't need the word "freedom" at all, we could simply say "existence". The belief one is acting freely is easier to experience than freedom itself is, unless of course the inverse is true. The essay does little to untangle this Gordian Knot of "experience", aka consciousness, aka the hard problem. But refocusing on the sociological nature of freedom, freedom from interference by corporeal authority, whether justified by morality or not, makes it plain that the experience (which is to say, for clarity, in this context, the existence) of freedom is not at all a certainty, either in the abstract or in practice.

>Second, freedom is the standard for judging moral claims.

Here is where we have a choice to either consider the premise of the essay to be entirely incorrect or merely incoherent. It is this claim which makes clear the intersection between the psychological and sociological perspectives on freedom. If only the freedom of the judge, or only the freedom of the claimant, is to be considered, then the dictate is merely incorrect; freedom is only one of an indeterminate number of standards that must be utilized in assessing the accuracy of a moral claim. But a useful consideration of freedom, and perhaps even a moral consideration of morality, must (not merely "should", but must) consider not just the freedom of the judge and the claimant, but the freedom of everyone else, as well. So although the statement is not incorrect in saying that freedom "is the standard", an analysis which addresses only the personal/psychological perspective and forgoes focusing (nearly entirely) on the legal/sociological perspective of freedom is incoherent, incapable of producing any reasonable conjectures from its premises.

>Conscious experience also sets the inherent boundaries of our moral community.

Again, if only this were so, no discussion would be necessary on the matter of either freedom or morality, or for that matter, consciousness or experience.

I surmise, after reading the full essay, that the author's intent is to state that a comprehensible and useful morality must take into account the foundational (zeroth order) nature of self-determination (née "free will"), and on that I agree entirely. But rather than subvert any real consideration of morality by making it subservient to consciousness, a philosophically sound approach must presume that morality itself is not secondary and subsequent, even a first order let alone second order phenomena, but an integral aspect of consciousness/self-determination itself, merely a different perspective on the zeroth order existential reality of conscious being. To do anything else leaves us mired in "do what thou wilt" as the preeminent dictate, an immoral premise.

IMHO. Thanks for your time. Hope it helps.

>Then how do we explain the double slit experiment,

Question: why do panpsychists always want to flip from a philosophical consideration of consciousness that admits no existence of anything objective except their own mind to the conundrum of wave-partice duality which necessarily presupposes the existence of all of the objective apparatus that demonstrations of quantum physics requires, as soon as their philosophical hypothesis is shown to be incoherent? Answer: because their philosophical hypothesis is incoherent.

>as if what might have occurred--but we understand not to have occurred-

Because the reliance of your description on "as if" and the limits of our understanding reinforces rather than refutes my position, that's why. If you took your own position seriously, there would be no need to refer to the double slit experiment, it would simply be a mundane an unsurprising result that whatever we wish to be is what happens, even when it needs to reverse chronology and change what happened, in order to make what is match our desires. But your position cannot be taken seriously in that way, instead it is incoherent, because this phenomena can only be demonstrated by the double slit experiment, and panpsychism has no cogent explanation for why that is the only circumstance that conforms to this expectation of yours that objectivity is subjective.

Realists don't need to explain quantum weirdness, we need merely annotate it as weird, and not currently explained. But fantasists can't explain why everything else except carefully and rigorously defined demonstrations like the double slit experiment doesn't exhibit the same kind of weirdness. That alone is not an insurmountable task: if an idealist worldview could coherently describe how, when, and why quantum decoherence results reliably (very reliably) in the deterministic objective behavior of non-quantum systems, that would be interesting and informative. But that doesn't seem likely, since idealist philosophies such as panpsychism reject the notion any such description is necessary, and are incompatible with scientific results because science is realist rather than anti-realist.

>The implication being, observation causes change in the observed.

Your implication is simple-minded and mistaken. For the purposes of physical experiments (including quantum mechanics) "observation" is interaction with any other system, not limited in any way to conscious perception. The double slit demonstration carefully excludes all other interactions in order to make the effect obvious, but all it proves is that quantum weirdness (including the measurement problem, heisenberg's uncertainty principle, wave-particle duality, and other related but not necessarily identical artifacts) is an objective phenonemon, independent of any subjective "belief system" of the scientist performing the empirical experiment or philosopher proclaiming its implications, despite being surprising based on intuitions honed by classical objective phenomena.

Since the basic premise of panpsychism is that mind is more fundamental than matter, quantum physics doesn't actually support your premise any more than classical physics does. It just opens the door to epistemic and metaphysical confusion, which fantasists can then take advantage of to pretend their hypothesis is coherent.

>Except, on the quantum level we abandon many of our physical and metaphysical presumptions and assumptions about causation itself.

LOL. Nobody abandoned any assumptions, we are simply forced to do without certain familiar prevarication and posturing. Since the quantum world still conforms to an extreme degree with mathematical predictability (it simply does so probabalistically rather than deterministically) causation itself still favors the realist side rather than the fantasist side, despite the adjustment that must be made in understanding what causation is. I've developed a philosophy which does so adequately, without the need to resort to anti-realism.

>Again, we cannot have an experience of lacking consciousness. > Hallucinations are experiences, even if they are not shared. >But here we contemplate objectivity itself, not just any conjecture.

Your declarations lead to confused rhetoric and pointless insistences, so I reject your semantics and instead attempt to clarify discussions of very difficult topics by using better ideas about the proper usage of these words. "Experience" excludes false perceptions such as dreams and hallucinations. "Objectivity" does not exclude subjectivity. These aren't perfect allowances; the nature of epistemology and ontology ensure that no terminology can be perfect. But mine is more practical than yours, more consistent and productive. Yours simply revels in being mired in ignorance so that you can maintain a fantasist's outlook.

>We were encouraged to discard the theory as nonsense, just as you have.

I have read extensively on it. My dismissal is not based on a mere paragraph, but grows ever more certain with every paragraph I read about it. My philosophy actually explains the underlying problem (related to the connection, necessarily but generally inconsequentially ignored by scientific realism, between self-determination, consciousness, and the nature of teleologies, causation) that fantasists believe justifies panpsychism, but without all the fantasizing panpsychism requires. And the fact that even after all that anti-realist effort, panpsychism still doesn't provide a coherent explanation seems, to me, to bring the matter to a conclusion. No, I cannot disprove idealism, but that's okay, because I don't need to, I only need to recognize why it can't be disproven.

Thanks for your time. Hope it helps.

>Likewise, we often use redundant phrases to clarify nuances or potentially confused concepts.

My point was that this is not such an instance. I had hoped that was obvious, both from context and the fact I explained this issue previously. The phrase "subjective experience" (or, alternately, "subjective perceptions") does not "clarify nuance" or reduce confusion, it breeds confusion or hides assumptions, possibly on purpose.

>Your position is that experiences are only those subjective perspectives that are validated based on your conjecture of objectivity.

You are incorrect. My position is that only perceptions which are caused by the same external objective occurences as the internal perceptions of those occurances are actually "experiences". To clarify the nuance: only things that actually happened are experienced. This analysis is not based on whether it can be proved the experience actually happened to anyone else's satisfaction, but it is independent of how certain the person who believes they are/were accurately perceiving events is that they experience those events. It leaves all experiences (indeed, all perceptions) metaphysically uncertain, but such is life. Mankind invents philosophy to explore such quandaries, philosophy did not invent mankind to prove a point.

A solipsistic view might rely on only a "conjecture of objectivity", but a sane perspective cannot, not even in the guise of a philosophical premise. To reduce confusion: dreams, false memories, hallucinations, and (most controversially, given the nature of the subject) NDE are not "experiences", they are perceptions of occurances which didn't factually occur: false experiences. Again, I understand why this is an unsatisfactory conjecture for idealists, but that their demands for absolute certainty or metaphysically transcendent logic are unreasonable and impossible to satisfy is not something that I can control.

>My position is that any conjecture of objectivity only ever tentatively postulates a network of subjective perspectives within a metaphysical framework.

If you were the only consciousness in the universe, that would be your only option. To cling to it as a necessary assumption when you are just one person among billions, many of which existed long before you did, is solipsism, though.

>If objectivity does not necessarily follow from the collection and comparison of various subjective perspectives, then we should not reject any perspective as experience based on that which we only tentatively hold.

Objectivity definitely cannot follow from only one person's collection and mental comparison of their own subjective perspectives. And, indeed, we cannot prima facie reject any perception as experience, at all. But to say that the existence of objective perceptions and experiences and also their distinction from private delusions of having experienced things which never happened is 'tentative' leaves only two comprehensible positions: solipsism or insanity.

>But your conjecture of objectivity is, by definition, tentative.

All conjectures are by definition tentative (presumptuous), this can be (logically) assumed. Based on that, logic (computational cognition) becomes, from that point on, useless, as it relies on further assumptions which are also tentative since they are conjectures which follow from more fundamental assumptions, each becoming more tentative from the previous. Reason (non-computational cognition, relying on presumptions rather than assumptions, and utilizing comparison of qualia rather than calculation of quantities) remains more than adequate, however; each conjecture becomes more reliable rather than more tentative, because the process is a pile of comparisons rather than a chain of logic. But that is a slight digression from your point.

To address what I must surmise is your point in mentioning the tentative character of (all, or just this one you imagine, inaccurately, I have made about objectivity) conjectures: just because all conjectures are tentative does not mean that they are all equally tentative. So simply observing my conjecture is tentative neither requires it be unreliable nor suggests that it is untrue.

>And I might query if this person perceives another object as a tree or a person. But I can never be sure the first object is a person, so I cannot be sure about the new tree/person simply because the person I thought was a tree agrees with me.

As far as I can tell, you have reiterated my point, but rejected what I presumed was your position. You can never be sure if the "new tree" is even a tree, if you are already hallucinating that a tree is speaking to you. Did you actually experience the tree/person speaking? Of course you didn't, if it is a tree, or perhaps even if it is a person. Can you, alone and by yourself, through any mental effort of either reasoning or logic, know with more than tentative certainty that anyone is speaking, that you are not simply imagining that other people, indeed your own body, or time and space, even exist? No, you cannot. Solipsism (indistinguishable except by abstract declaration from 'the brain in a jar conundrum') is undefeatable because it is unfalsifiable. But from a practical perspective, it is also indistinguishable (by the solipsist) from insanity. Luckily enough, other people don't have such a difficult time telling the difference between a philosophical premise and a mental disorder. Usually.

>postulating the existence of anything that lacks consciousness is extraneous;

Only if you first postulate, not just without evidence but contrary to all available evidence (and there is, despite denials by solipsists/idealists/panpsychists, a LOT of evidence) that your consciousness is independent of the body from which it emerges. Otherwise, postulating the existence of things which lack consciousness isn't necessary, one can directly observe an unlimited number of them.

>whereas perspective per se, confused as it must be, cannot be denied.

Perspectives cannot be denied. Their accuracy can be. Disappointing as it must be, your philosophical perspective is only coherent if it is solipsistic. Otherwise, it is simply an incoherent hypothesis which fails to be rigorously philosophical. Or perhaps it is merely insanity. Do you actually believe paperclips are conscious? Are the pixels on the screen you are looking at conscious? Are the letters those pixels form conscious? Are the photons emitted by those pixels to present those letters to your eyes conscious? Are your eyes conscious independently of your own consciousness? (You may recognize this as the "combination problem", perhaps in inverse form, which everyone but panpsychists recognizes wrecks panpsychism.)

Solipsism, incoherence, or insanity. Those are your only choices, if you believe your philosophy is a serious perspective. Please forgive me for being so blunt.

Thanks for your time. Hope it helps.

>Please present your proof then...or at least some sort of evidence.

I did.

>Ok then, would you be comfortable with acknowledging that everything you say is merely your opinion then?

Of course not. Most of my opinions here are based on facts and solid reasoning, very thoroughly considered and carefully constructed to be taken seriously in the context of philosophical discussions and presenting that reasoning honestly and at some length, despite the restrictions of the format. They are far more than "merely" opinions.

Your responses have been either parroting other people's opinions or flailing, in contrast.

>Also: would it be too much to ask for you to STOP READING MY MIND?

All I can do is read your words, and make honest and reasonable conjectures based on them. Crying about it without actually demonstrating (by something more than mere denials, while repeating the very behavior that led to those apparently well-justified conjectures) that my suppositions are inaccurate won't suffice to stop me from reading your words, and knowing that those words came from your mind.

If you don't believe identifying something a belief calls into question whether or is a fact, why do you keep blankly asserting, as if it were an informative observation, that my assertions are beliefs? Something about your argumentation is severely deficient in explaining the reason for your argumentation. I suspect I know exactly what it is. Does that bother you?

> question: can we chose to chose not to eat?

Indeed we can. Though looking at it plainly, that becomes a far deeper question than you might realize. So it makes sense to consider the various reasons why we might choose to do so, and why our decision may be one we can, if you'll excuse the expression, 'live with'. Are we trying to lose weight? Are we protesting injustice? Are we using medical technology to remain alive without eating? Consciousness is, by it's very nature and regardless of its origin or mechanisms, both fraught and perilous.

>That is, are our decisions pertaining to our actions and behaviors resulting from our “self-determination”, not also arising from stimulation-response automata offering the illusion of consciousness where there is only a secondary system based in stimulation-response, not necessarily more complicated but just secondary and acting on the first?

That is a much better question than your first one, but not necessarily as equivalent to it as your rhetoric suggests.

The answer is illuminating, if you are willing to even try to understand it. The truth is that, yes, our decisions (which follow from, rather than precede, our choices, as proven by Benjamin Libet decades ago) do indeed arise from mechanisms that can be modeled as computational, although to say they are "stimulation-response automata" themselves is assuming a conclusion. The 'secret' to self-determination is that those decisions, while arising in the very same brain that produced the choices, are the result of an independent set of "automota", one which includes the (seemingly) impossibly illogical stimuli and response of 'perception', 'experience', and 'mind'. The divergence (whether merely potential or actual) between the outcomes of these two putatively separate selection mechanisms is exactly what is being discussed here. The choices are selected unconsciously (Freudians suggest the term "subconsciously", but it is problematic) just as any animal executes actions as the result of neurological activity. But the decisions which follow, as explanations for why the action was executed, and provide an opportunity to imagine having chosen differently, are not bound by those choices, and can 'integrate' (if you will) information available only to a conscious creature which is, therefor, thereby, and therefore, able to conceive of things like future and past (independent of the operant conditioning which might determine choices in a simple stimuli-response automata) and desires and intentions and goals and hope and possibility and compassion and morality and 'life as more than simply surviving and replicating genes' unconsciously. In short, thinking and reasoning, rather than computation and logic. The "being" that gives rise to the word for it, not simply the physical existence of it.

As these decisions, teleological examinations of self-awareness, follow our choices, they cannot change them once those choices have occurred, because the decision cannot exist until after the choice it regards has occured, and has unalterably become physically evident. There is no free will, we cannot actually change the direction of time's arrow and reverse chronology to undo the past. But these decisions are not "meaningless", because they are real and they are at least partially independent of the "automata" which produced the choice (and this is both why and how self-determination exists, despite free will, the conventional explanation for it, being impossible) and our self-determinations become part (not a controlling part, but a factual part, and potentially a more powerful stimulus than even biological imperatives or physical truth) of all the future choices, both related by rational connection or simply subsequent in that individual brain. And this, my friend, is what consciousness is.

https://www.reddit.com/r/NewChurchOfHope/comments/wkkgpr/por_101_there_is_no_free_will_only

Thanks for your time. Hope it helps.

>>All speaking is always done from an unavoidably relative perspective....

>False.

>Also: requires omniscience.

Unsubstantiated balderdash. Also: malarkey. How would speaking require omniscience, and how could it avoid a relative perspective?

>Actually, it is a belief.

As I've patiently explained to you several times, in different ways and across several conversations, and you have failed to address let alone refute in every instance, there isn't any absolute distinction between facts and beliefs you assume and wish there were. So yes, it is actually a belief that all speech is a relative perspective, and it is unavoidable fact, as well. Since it is unavoidable, the more you try to evade it, the more you appear to be flailing desperately.

>My complaint is that you seem to be using another word, but with that meaning.

Would the term "synonym" be applicable, perhaps? Yes, in this context, as in almost every other, 'is' and 'equals' can be considered synonyms, despite the fact they are not exactly the same. Either meaning or word would be sufficient, for my purposes, as they probably would be to any reasonable person reading my thoughts. Your flailing is both the cause and the effect of your inability to be a reasonable person, in that way.

>This is a belief.

It is your belief that it is a belief. But all truths are merely the belief that they are truth. This causes no problems to my position or in my philosophy, but it must to yours, or why else would you keep bringing up whether something is a belief as if were relevant, like that is a prima facie indication it isn't true or not also a fact?

>This is rhetoric. Also consciousness in action.

All text is rhetoric. Also consciousness in action. Yes. Once again, your observation does not provide a counter-argument to the statement.

Keep flailing!

Thanks for your time. Hope it helps.

All speaking is always done from an unavoidably relative perspective; that is a factual certainty, given the nature of speech, consciousness, and metaphysics. Since I never used the word "equals" and it has nothing to do with the conversation, and it is rarely used except by tossers pretending to have absolute perspectives or someone pronouncing "=" out loud, your initial comment on the matter, and all your follow up comments, consititue flailing.

Thanks for your time. Hope it helps.

You should explain the distinction, what makes it important rather than irrelevant in this context, and its relevance to my comment, along with what implications it supposedly has to the issue.

What?

It is a reasonable presumption, which you've been kind enough to confirm was accurate.

Flailing tends to be more genuine, but still qualifies as posturing. Flail away.

>Do you reject subjective perception as experience, or not?

Categorically? Of course not. Most subjective perceptions are based on objective stimuli, and are actually experiences. But this does not mean that everything someone imagines or falsely believes happened to them is something they actually experienced:

>>I reject the notion that perceptions which are "subjective" aren't experiences.

Those are scare quotes, identifying a particularly facetious use of the term "subjective" to suggest that experiences flagged with it are just as valid as experiences which are not, and simply referred to as "experiences" or the even more dangerous phrase "objective experiences".

>The wording is confusing.

The issue is confusing. The wording can be adequately understood by looking at the entire context rather than seizing on a single instance of syntax. But given the nature of the subject, there will always be instances of confusing wording.

>If so, then how do we explain lucid dreaming, where the dreamer has the experience of influencing their dreams as they happen?

They have the perception, the belief that they experienced that, just as everyone does regardless of the content of the dream. They do not qualify as "experiences" any more than a false memory does. They are, in fact, that very thing, except they arise from different neurocognitive mechanisms and therefor have differing characteristics. I have had lucid dreams, and in a conversation in a general context I have no trouble saying "I experience lucid dreaming", but the current context demands more exacting terminology, so I would insist that dreams are not experiences, and would say that experiencing dreaming isn't quite the same as experiencing a dream.

>the framework through which we might categorize phenomena as objective or subjective is always derived from some metaphysical theory

Your metaphysical theory may run aground in this area, but mine does not, that's all I'm saying. Your assumption of "or" is physically inaccurate, so I have no trouble accepting that it is metaphysically inaccurate as well.

>We distinguish hallucination from reality

Your proclamations about such things become careless and ambiguous when you are not careful to identify just who this "we" is. From the remainder of the paragraph, I can only surmise you mean a single person somehow subjectively determining whether their personal sense perceptions are hallucinatory. This is a practical and theoretical impossibility, a misrepresentation of what the word "hallucination" refers to. One can suspect that one's perceptions are true or false, but one cannot determine whether it is so.

>Objectivity, then, can only ever be surreal

When one is standing alone in the woods, it can easily feel that way. You're basically ignoring all the evidence of objectivity outside of such personal experiences. Yet, the feeling of "surrealness" is objectively occurring as a brain state of undefined (and perhaps undefined, even ineffable) character.

>Descartes's mistake, likewise, is attributing to his subjective doubt an objective subject, "I",

A necessity cannot be a mistake, however inconvenient it is to your reasoning. The doubt is as objective and subjective as the "I", in the case of Descartes' very accurate (indeed, unassailable) reasoning. As I've already explained, the existence (and therefor the distinction) of "objective' or 'subjective' character doesn't enter into it until one gets passed the dubito and attempt to reason further, which is the process defined as the Cartesian Circle. In order to proceed with his reasoning, Descartes relied on the otherwise inexplicable (and presumably prior) existence of a rational (objective rather than reasoning) universe, which he could explain with no other terms than a benevolent deity's gift. Neopostmodernists silently substitute metaphysical transcendence of mathematics (rationality, or logic, in this context) for God and then backtrack to proclaim Descartes' to have erred, while preserving their own "I" free of the necessary metaphysical doubt (either transfering it to everything outside their consciousness, or pretending to deny the existence of their own agency as proven by their ability to reason at all.) I prefer a more cognizant and comprehensive approach, of using the intrinsic reasoning of language already demonstrated by cogito ergo sum, and foregoing the purposeful yet meaningless ignorance of the empirical evidence that there is an objective world, regardless of why or how it came to be. Descartes had faith in God, you have faith in Logic, and I have faith in reasoning and language.

>All experience is of consciousness

All experience is of perceptions by consciousness. The perceptions must still be explained in order to understand what the consciousness is, and accurately interpret the perceptions, including determining, as best we are able, which are experiences and which are dreams, delusions, or hallucinations.

>The hard problem of consciousness is explaining why anything ever lacks consciousness.

This is an erroneous perspective on what is meant by the hard problem of consciousness. It is not an engineering challenge or a scientific puzzle which can be overcome with explanations or theories. It is simply the ineffable distinction between an experience, and the experience of experiencing that experience.

>One need not be vexed by brains in jars when we understand that everything is mind.

You cannot overcome the metaphysical uncertainty of the brain in a jar conundrum by relying on epistemic uncertainty about what "mind" is. To say that "everything is mind" is simply declaring that the word is meaningless by invoking a false tautology.

Thanks for your time. Hope it helps.

>And yet, even in your comment you've couched your language in that of perspective.

"Couched"? I think not. I don't know of any way to discuss subjectivity without discussing subjectivity. And I think we can all appreciate how badly it would go if I presented my perspective as objective rather than subjective.

>The objective reality that we assume exists, and which we claim to experience, we can only access through our subjective experience.

When I can do so without confusing people who assume otherwise, I reject the notion that perceptions which are "subjective" aren't experiences. We remember experiencing dreams, but we never experience them, we only experience "remembering" them. In the moments we are regaining consciousness (mind) after being unconscious, we construct dreams to account for the change from our previously experienced 'brain state' before we lost consciousness, and since our mental apparatus is geared towards recognizing perceptions as experiences, we get the impression (a notoriously impressionistic one) that we are experiencing those events which never happened. This explains both why the 'reality' of dreams is so convincing while waking but becomes a confused jumble while recalling them afterwards, and why dreaming strongly correlates with the occurence of REM sleep (being a more profound re-ordering of brain states than simple unconsciousness but the dreams don't actually occur during that period, as evidenced by the occassions when the 'events' concluding a dream are triggered by environmental stimuli at the time of waking.

Hallucinations, likewise, are illusions of experiences rather than experiences, if they are concurrent and intermingled with real perceptions (hearing voices or seeing figmentary creatures or objects which seem to exist along with more concrete perceptions) or delusions, if they entirely replace sense perceptions (complete psychedelic "trips" or waking dreams).

So all experiences objectively occur, somehow, even if they are not of the physical character that "objective experiences" are. Referencing "subjective experiences", as you have, is confusion or misdirection.

> objectivity is assumed based on some metaphysical theory about the reliability of such subjective experiences.

No such theorizing is either necessary or useful. The metaphysical theory that 'subjective perceptions' are experiences is flawed epistemically, since all perceptions are equally "subjective", as you presume. Objectivity (not our perspective of accurate knowledge, but the physical nature of objects independent of our knowledge of them) is not an assumption, it is a conjecture. And an extremely valid and typically sound conjectures, for that matter (no pun intended). So much so that some metaphysical theory that "subjective" is a coherent distinction from objective can be relied upon for most, but not all, reasoning.

>We can't prove the accuracy of our subjective experiences because any standard upon which we might base this proof likewise derives from subjective experiences. There is no archimedean solid point from which to leverage objectivity.

Quite the contrary. We need not "prove" the accuracy of our perceptions ("subjective experiences") to other people, which is considered the defining feature of the idea something is proved. The "brain in a jar conundrum" which vexes you will never be defeated, no matter how long your lever or solid your fulcrum.

>Every thought and feeling we have occurs subjectively, as does any notion of objectivity.

Since your assumption is a subjective one, it cannot be proven. My contrary presumption that all subjective perceptions objectively occur (differing in character only in that some are the result of external physical stimuli and others the result of internal mental causes, but in every other way objectively identical in that they correspond to neurological phenomenon of an as-yet ill-defined nature) has the advantage of being scientifically falsifiable but empirically unfalsified.

>The confusion of Descartes's cogito ergo sum is his assumption of the thinker as an objective entity based on a subjective doubt;

Your confusion about cogito ergo sum is caused by your mistaken belief that it relies on any assumptions, or results in any necessarily "objective" entity. This is a widespread error these days. It is the Cartesian Circle, not "dubito, cogito..." by which Descartes introduces the dualistic dichotomy between objective and subjective.

>That is, cogito ergo sum is a subjective experience, not an object.

I say again, the phrase "subjective experience" is so profoundly redundant it becomes meaningless. It seeks to jump over the hard problem of consciousness with semantics, occluding the very nature of "experience" in much the same way the Cartesian Circle skips the formulation of a rational universe in which to "be" with a self-referential invocation of a benevolent deity. Neopostmodernists simply replace God with faith in the transcendence of mathematics, often unaware they are ignoring the need for the Cartesian Circle entirely, and believing their perspective rests directly on dubito of any ideas they disagree with prima facei.

If the term "objective" has any referent or meaning at all, then subjective perceptions, while inaccessible to naive empirical demonstration, objectively occur as neurological occurences. To believe otherwise goes so far beyond idealistic dualism that it becomes solipsism.

LOL.

Your flailing is still pointless.