I have been an atheist and an absolute physicalist for all my life, but recently I feel like more and more "woo-woo" stuff is creeping into philosophy.
I read this post on reddit (https://www.reddit.com/r/consciousness/comments/1bz2gxs/dream_triangles_a_thought_experiment/), and what struck me was that it didn't just sound like stoner ramblings, like most woo-woo stuff does. But even so, it faces an obvious problem: we live in a physical reality, and there is no evidence of there being anything except the physical. The idea of there existing some kind of magic triangle floating around in your brain while you sleep is clearly specious, if not outright ludicrous.
Am I missing something here? Why would anyone ever start with a false notion (that there could be anything except the physical)? Why not start with the fact that we live in a physical universe, a fact established by copious evidence, and then go from there?
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Yntgb
Huh?
Yntgbtr
This stuff is way above your head. But I'm glad that reddit post frightened you. It's nothing special though, just another reiteration of the hard problem, although quite a neat one.
There is no trialgle floating above your head, take your medication.
>There is no trialgle floating above your head, take your medication.
Tell me you don't understand the hard problem without telling me.
You seem to have misunderstood.
The point he's making is that he can imagine a triangle and yet the triangle has no physical properties. How are we able to do this if the physical realm is absolute?
How can a computer display images on a screen if it's just passing electrons around?
By sending signals to pixels on the screen.
Well there you go, that's how you visualize a triangle. Electrons (which is a MASSIVE oversimplification of neurological activity but it works) get passed to the visualprocessing center, which produces a triangle. Yes, when you visualize something and thus see it with your mind's eye your visual processing center works exactly the same as if you were actually seeing it, this is an empirically verifiable fact and is well studied.
This counterpoint was already addressed in OP's screenshot. The signals that would produce a triangle on a screen are not the triangle itself. The triangle only exists when the signals are activated and the triangle is displayed on the screen. Ergo, the triangle exists physically.
The triangle in your mind exists recognisably as a triangle and yet it is not physical. There's no process occurring to bring it into existence in a physical sense. It exists in a realm separate to the physical.
Let me be unequivocally clear: mental phenomena, no matter how “real” or compelling they may seem, are not "real" in the same sense as physical phenomena. Similarly, the idea that a triangle in a dream is really a triangle is silly. Dreams (of course) are not actual, hence an object in a dream isn't actually an object. It doesn't matter if the object appears triangular, circular, or square... these are merely hallucinations, and no aspect of them is real, including their shape. They are the product of neural processes, not some separate, non-physical realm of existence. To conflate the two is to commit a serious error. Of course, our mental representations may not always exhibit a perfect one-to-one correspondence with the underlying physical states of the brain. But this is simply a fundamental feature of cognition, not some deep philosophical conundrum. It poses no serious challenge to the physicalist worldview. After all, the beauty of physicalism is that it can accommodate all of our subjective experiences without positing any mysterious, non-physical entities.
If you wish to continue this discourse, feel free to join me on Reddit:
https://new.reddit.com/r/consciousness/comments/1c0zejs/some_thoughts_on_the_dream_triangle_post_and/
Well, I just imagined God was real. So he's real. Now we can all go back to church once a week and leave the other 6 days for normal productive conversation like it used to be.
Dreams are real, in the sense that "there are such events as dreams". What they represent isn't necessarily real. But the point of the argument on the Reddit post OP is sperging over is that it's not meaningful to speak of a "representation" of a triangle, because a △ is always a triangle, therefore a △ your screen is a triangle, and △ in a dream is a triangle.
Dreams, like everything else you experience, are just signals in your brain. Your entire "world" is no more than neurons firing. You can't escape that, it is all you are. Your memories, your loves, your opinions, your thoughts, your dreams, your hopes, your tastes, even concepts like your "family", your "home", your "body", and even your experience of what constitutes those concepts, are simply the oscillations of grey matter. Cope.
Nawww, bro
My screen is a bunch of tiny lights
Do you people seriously have no prior knowledge of Plato or the world of forms?
It’s literally just IQ decline from third-world immigration, higher mutational load and general dysgenics. It will continue to get far worse in a feedback loop because as general social trust declines from the presence of foreign populations, religion fills the void because it’s the easiest means to bridge it.
Yeh, before all the darkies came here we were all hardline atheists and physicalists.
Epistemically mind comes before the physical.
>reddit
>cant into metaphysics
He's actually got a really good point
Has he? Why? How could any point make you doubt all the evidence that suggests that reality is inherently physical? 56% of living philosophers identify as physicalists. I think I will throw my lot in with them, rather than some moron who thinks he literally has a magic triangle floating about in his head when he imagines one.
Hylics such as yourself aren't capable of understanding
The problem is OP, you're too moronic to understand the Reddit post.
>babby's first time encountering elementary philosophy
Lol
Lmao
Kek, even
Reminds me of a joke Patton Oswalt made years ago. Imagine there's a person who's everyone's friend, is charitable, actually helps improve his community and is super involved, great family, wife and kids are happy and well adjusted, generally a stand up individual. When you ask him why he does it he tells you " I believe there's an invisible anus floating above my head at all times and if I'm not good it will shit flaming turd piranhas all over me and kill me."
Is it crazy? absolutely. But would you be okay allowing that person to believe that crazy idea because it keeps them doing objectively good things? That's the question.
You should read The Problems of Philosophy by Bertrand Russell. It’s a good one intro for someone with your perspective: