Upchurch said:
So, where do we draw the line about which experiences/stimuli/senses we believe are definitely "real" and potentially "illusion"? If we reject only some experiences/stimuli/senses, which ones do we reject and which do we accept?
Had to take some time to think about this. I will answer for the materialist POV, hopefully some idealists will join in, but they seem to only want to point out the wholes in materialism. Always silent on idealism.
There are two things that I think we need to think about when we discuss the illsuiory nature of awareness. Although maybe three.
a. Confabulation: our brains, as part of creating the perceptions make stuff up.
When you look at a checkered table cloth with just one eye, do you see the hole where the optic nerve goes through the retina? No, because your brain makes that part up.
When you look at any visual scene, do the colors fade away at the edges, no, because your brain makes them up.(Your eye only senses color at the center of the visual field)
When you watch a movie at a movie theater, do the figures on the screen look all herky jerky? They ought to because really there aren't enough frames to make the pictures smooth, they show you the same picture frame a couple of times at the flicker rate and then onto the next. Your brain creates the smoothness of the motion, from nothing.(Do you see lightbulbs flickering?)
It gets even worse when we look at head trauma and events directly preceding the head trauma. Most motorcycle accident that involve head trauma produce some interesting stuff. The person will have no recollection of why they were actualy riding in that neighborhood, they could have been going to the grocery store but they are convinced that they were headed to a friend's house.
Being middle aged, I have also noticed this effect in memeory, where the brain fills in holes.
So, as an organic creature, our brains are hard wired to fill in gaps and create stuff, which is very useful, especialy in terms of intuition.
b. Culural norms: There are a whole category of 'things' that we call things and act as though they exist because we are taught to do so by our cultures.
Temperature: an average measurement of the ambient air speed motion of air molecules that also involves the air dew point.
Race: a hundred years ago they really thought that the french and germans were different races! They had predictable and stereotypic behaviors and attitudes because of thier national race. Similar notions exist to this day, they are all cultural perceptions, and most of the differences can be attributed to cultural expectations and self fullfilling prophecy.
Self & Mind: Two things that are like temperature, a misperception of seperate events.
There are more general types but I have to think about them.
I know that at least one idealist will just say, you can't prove that the material world exists. And the correct counter is that they can not prove the mind world exists, unless they accept that the material world exists.
