The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #131699   Message #2993954
Posted By: GUEST,josep
26-Sep-10 - 10:55 AM
Thread Name: BS: The God Delusion 2010
Subject: RE: BS: The God Delusion 2010
///Well, whether or not it is delusional it cannot be argued that it is consciousness, since even if if what it is being conscious of is a delusion, the act of being conscious of it is still occurring. The notion that all experience and all experiences are just delusions, and nothing is really experiencing anything is absurd, in my view. The other thing to bear in mind is that agreement on an illusion beings about reality. As long as we can get a consensus about the solidity of solids and the visibility of light and so on, it doesn't much matter whether it is "illusory"/

From what point of view could you sort out whether it was real or illusion? It's a silly circular chase.///

It's the old brain-in-a-vat argument. You're nothing but a brain suspended in a vat wfilled with a solution in a laboratory somewhere and a mad scientist is stimulating that brain with electrical impulses to simluate all your life experiences. Even your reading this right now is just an illusion caused by the mad scientist. How can you prove that you are not a brain in a vat somewhere?

I used to have a similar thought when I was very young after watching "The Wizard of Oz." I wondered, "What if I'm really in a coma right now and none of this is happening and when I wake up, I'll be a grown man who is just dreaming all this and all the people I know then will be people I knew in this dream."

So how can you prove you are not in a coma right now just dreaming all this? You can't, just as you cannot prove that you are not a brain in a vat. But that doesn't mean that because you can't disprove the notion that you should then put any stock in it.

Someone insisting consciousness is an illusion is proposing the brain-in-a-vat argument. Consciousness is an illusion so everything that occurs in consciousness is likewise an illusion. Since you can't disprove consciousness is an illusion, you should therefore conclude that consciousness is an illusion. But since the person making the claim is doing so within my consciousness, he too is an illusion and his assertion that consciousness is an illusion is an illusion therefore consciousness is real. Kind of like, "Everything I tell you is a lie." It's the worst kind of sophistry and sheer nonsense.