My response to the phenomenon is a whole lot of nothing. So we have no colour in peripheral vision. I’ve known that since childhood. Hardly any cones there, compared with the centre. So what? I find this no more boggling than the Müller-Lyer illusion or the Necker cube.
Things are not what we naively take them to be. Well, wow.
The Müller-Lyer illusion is a mistake about properties of the world. You see two lines, you think they are the same length in reality, but they aren’t. Okay, but that doesn’t point out any inconsistency in your experience. It shows that your map doesn’t align with the territory, that’s all.
The card trick shows that you can be mistaken about the contents of your own experience. That you can believe you are having an experience of red, when in fact you are not having such an experience.
Nobody claims that you have direct access to the territory (well, almost nobody), but some phenomenal realists believe you have near-direct access to your own map, that you cannot be mistaken about the contents of your own experience. If that kind of phenomenal realism seems dumb to you, then you are probably not the intended target of the post!
Our perceptions of our inner experience can be as mistaken as our perceptions of the outside world. Who’d a thunk? This unsurprising (to me) phenomenon moves me not at all towards illusionism about interior worlds, any more than Müller-Lyer and the like move me to illusionism about the exterior world.
It seems like the only reason to disbelieve illusionism is introspection, that it seems not to be the case introspectively. So if introspection can be shown to be flawed, then you should move towards illusionism because it is otherwise the most parsimonious explanation of consciousness. Consciousness otherwise appears to be this weird thing that physics can’t account for, despite accounting for everything else.
Meanwhile, illusionism about the exterior world is not the most parsimonious explanation; things do in general behave as though there is a consistent physical world.
I think this is a bit God of the gaps style. Like, first you declare that the feelings are the most fundamental thing you can’t ever be wrong about. Then someone points out a situation where you are confused about them. Then, you say that in that situation you felt a confused feeling instead of being confused about your feelings. (hypothetical you here)
You are kind of peeling back layers of you brain that feed you information and declaring them not you.
My response to the phenomenon is a whole lot of nothing. So we have no colour in peripheral vision. I’ve known that since childhood. Hardly any cones there, compared with the centre. So what? I find this no more boggling than the Müller-Lyer illusion or the Necker cube.
Things are not what we naively take them to be. Well, wow.
The Müller-Lyer illusion is a mistake about properties of the world. You see two lines, you think they are the same length in reality, but they aren’t. Okay, but that doesn’t point out any inconsistency in your experience. It shows that your map doesn’t align with the territory, that’s all.
The card trick shows that you can be mistaken about the contents of your own experience. That you can believe you are having an experience of red, when in fact you are not having such an experience.
Nobody claims that you have direct access to the territory (well, almost nobody), but some phenomenal realists believe you have near-direct access to your own map, that you cannot be mistaken about the contents of your own experience. If that kind of phenomenal realism seems dumb to you, then you are probably not the intended target of the post!
Our perceptions of our inner experience can be as mistaken as our perceptions of the outside world. Who’d a thunk? This unsurprising (to me) phenomenon moves me not at all towards illusionism about interior worlds, any more than Müller-Lyer and the like move me to illusionism about the exterior world.
It seems like the only reason to disbelieve illusionism is introspection, that it seems not to be the case introspectively. So if introspection can be shown to be flawed, then you should move towards illusionism because it is otherwise the most parsimonious explanation of consciousness. Consciousness otherwise appears to be this weird thing that physics can’t account for, despite accounting for everything else.
Meanwhile, illusionism about the exterior world is not the most parsimonious explanation; things do in general behave as though there is a consistent physical world.
I think this is a bit God of the gaps style. Like, first you declare that the feelings are the most fundamental thing you can’t ever be wrong about. Then someone points out a situation where you are confused about them. Then, you say that in that situation you felt a confused feeling instead of being confused about your feelings. (hypothetical you here)
You are kind of peeling back layers of you brain that feed you information and declaring them not you.
I’m not sure who this is addressed to. I have not said these things.