My posts really aren’t about reality or dreams or what’s real and what isn’t – they’re more about challenging certain unsupported claims that are rarely challenged.

Materialists often hold others to a higher standard of proof than they do themselves, and they do so without even realizing it. They claim that consensus reality is self-evidently real, yet they make this claim without proof. When others make similar claims about psychedelic realms, they demand proof, and in the absence of proof, proclaim that such realms are products of a temporarily miswired brain and obviously are not real.

My hope is that my posts serve as a rational counterpoint to the unsupported claims made by some materialists. They are quick to attack others who make unsupported claims, yet are rarely questioned when they make unsupported claims themselves. I’m trying to keep them honest.

Too damaged to type more or even think, but I love this thread.

jpinky

I believe this sentence of yours is really the essence of your arguments, so let me sing along that song for a while.

What consequences does this have in everyday reality? None apart from metaphysical musings, unless you start using it to justify your actions.
When demonstrating that ghosts visited you, you have a gnome in the shed or that autonomous DMT entities visits you - does the quoted sentence have any impact whatsoever? No.
Does the quoted sentence really constitute a valid critique of the statement "DMT entities are most likely hallucinations and events in your own mind"? No, it doesn't.
Does the quoted sentence justify a personal belief in the reality of your DMT experiences? No, it doesn't: we can't prove that the universe wasn't created by a waffle either, but we don't use this as an argument to say that the universe actually was created by a waffle.

Have you also considered the fact that hallucinogens attack very important sites in the brain that are vital for many of the contents in our consciousness? Have you thought about the fact that they target sites that are responsible for how significant we perceive events to be, and that they stimulate these areas to go haywire making neurons buzz like a maniac on methamphetamines - which in turn creates the feeling of evidently realness, deep meaning and so on? That this again makes the experience feel more real than real? Hallucinogens really disturb the brains normal modus operandi, and it is not difficult at all to seriously consider the fact that the strange experiences is the brains attempt to sort out the ridiculous and obscure information flow it receives when the molecules have triggered a response in its neurons.

Furthermore you say that materialists require more proof than is fair, but this is not true, because psychedelic enthusiasts claim they meet autonomous entitites, visit autonomous realms of the universe and so on. The materialists doubt that this is even possible, considering the pharmacology of the hallucinogens and the absence of evidence of such events taking place in consensus reality and not only in the users own mind, and demand that the enthusiasts somehow can demonstrate or refer to evidence to back up that this is the case. Again, it is not difficult if you formulate a falsifiable hypothesis. There is no need in this process for any metaphysical rambling of the fact that we can't prove that everyday reality is not an illusion. I think, in fact, that this argument in discussions like this is a desperate, old and ridiculous one, and it is all more about semantics than it is a valid ciritique of the original statement. This metaphysical consideration we can say nothing about, and it is interesting on its own terms as a pure metaphysical discussion, but it does not prevent us from saying anything about the likelihood of events, nor does it prevent us from demanding evidence to back up claims.

Imagine how science would look if we went around saying to eachother "Prove to me that everyday reality is real! I am not going to provide evidence for my propositions because from a pure metaphysical perspective this can all be a massive collective hallucination." It is totally fruitless.

Philosophy is interesting, but it has the disadvantage that sometimes you may find an argument so intriguing that you swallow it completely just to spit it out where it seems relevant, while you at the same time readily forget to think yourself.

A proposition of the how universe works is either right or wrong. That DMT entities contact you on DMT is a proposition about how the universe works. This is either right or wrong..

First, I suggest you read my previous post regarding motivations on my part.

You once again misunderstand me. I’m not an apologist for those who insist that DMT realms are real. To the contrary, I’m quite certain that how real an experience seems to be is no indication of how real it is.

It’s clear you still don’t understand, as this quote demonstrates:


It’s true that some psychedelic enthusiasts claim to meet autonomous entities, visit autonomous realms, etc. They have no proof that the realms/entities are indeed autonomous/independent of mind. I agree with this, and have written at length about the “improbability of hyperspace”.

But here’s what you don’t seem to grasp:

Sober materialists also claim to meet autonomous entities and visit autonomous realms on a nearly continuous basis. They call the realm “consensus reality” and the entities “human beings”. They insist the realm they visit is real, yet offer no evidence whatsoever that it is.


So...

Don’t expect others to provide evidence for their “self-evidently real” experiences when you yourself are unable to provide evidence for your own “self-evidently real” experiences.

This is getting into a degree of absurdity I don't really want to be a part of, gibran2. Try to think about what this actually means, and I can help you on the way with an example: science would shut down.

As far as the rest, we seem to have reached an understanding =)

Why would science shut down? I honestly don’t see how you come to that conclusion. Even a well-known scientist referred to consensus reality as an illusion:


Accepting the illusory nature of reality didn’t seem to affect science as far as Albert Einstein was concerned. Why do you feel science would “shut down” if it was generally accepted that we can’t prove consensus reality is “real”?

As others have pointed out in this thread and elsewhere, so little is changed by accepting that the “realness” of consensus reality can’t be proven that they’ve repeatedly asked me “So what?”

And the answer I’ve given is the one I gave a couple posts back:

Don’t expect others to provide evidence for their “self-evidently real” experiences when you yourself are unable to provide evidence for your own “self-evidently real” experiences.

Because of the way you in which you formulated yourself;


You say that I, or anyone for that matter, cannot demand evidence for something because I, or anyone, can't ultimately prove to someone else that every day reality is real. Put in practice this would mean anyone is just as right or just as wrong, and as I've pointed out this is nonsense because either the universe we perceive behave like this or that, or it doesn't.

What Albert meant with this quote we can't really know for certain, but as a physics student my best guess is that he probably was thinking about his theory of relativity.

Now, if you had phrased yourself something like this "Reality may just be an illusion, this we can't know for sure, but this doesn't stop us from saying anything about the likelihood and reality of natural phenomenon" I would whole-heartedly agree with you. See the difference? It was just your formulation that stuck by me, you see.

For the record, I agree we can't ultimately prove everyday reality is real - I guess that is simply impossible. HOWEVER, I do not agree that this consideration means we can't demand evidence for things, or that it prevents us from saying anything about the reality we live in.

If you are leaving open the possibility that consensus reality is an illusion, then we are in agreement. And if reality is an illusion, then how different is it really from DMT-related realms?

However, those who insist that consensus reality is “real” and other realms are not real until proven real are hypocrites – they expect proof from others that they are unable to provide themselves.

Yes, I certainly can entertain the possibility that everyday reality may be an illusion, or at least very illusory. But what else do we have? I edited my post above, by the way =)

What else do we have? Nothing. There’s no way to prove that consensus reality or any other realm is “real”. As I’ve said, we define what is real, because we have no other choice. The only thing we know for sure is real is that consciousness exists.

DMT user: “I know that DMT realms are real. I can’t prove it, but I’m absolutely convinced.”

Materialist: “I know that consensus reality is real. I can’t prove it, but I’m absolutely convinced.”

Do you see now that these two positions are more similar than they first appeared to be?

Yes, these statements are pretty alike indeed. But do you think that there is any more reason to believe that DMT realms are real than that consensus reality at least have decent amounts of pretty consistent traits that makes it more plausible to be real? I am thinking about for example science in this question. The fact that we can demonstrate a vide variety of phenomenon and things to occur within our reality. The fact that we have objective measurements and observations. Now comparing this to the DMT realm(s), we haven't been able to demonstrate that DMT realms exist apart from personal subjective experiences (that in themselves varies from individual to individual). We have no evidence to support that the existence of DMT realms are possible in the same way our consensus reality is.

Wouldn't you agree that if, say you receieved information from these entities you could not have otherwise, or if you brought back some other evidence, that the DMT realms are "real" akin to our consensus reality that we live in? This would be a pretty clear demonstration, don't you think? I guess my position is that from within the confines of our everyday reality (which is all we have and can say something certain about) and the universe we find ourselves in, we have no reason to assume the autonomous existence of DMT realms. From what we can tell these experiences are hallucinations along with the obviously wrong perception that you for example have a gnome in the shed (yeah I know, I've used this gnome example alot but it illustrates a point and is easy to consider).

I am not sure if I am communicating my thoughts in a clear way, but perhaps you see where I am going. I am a bit tired after a long day with lectures and work, so if I am unclear in this post please make me try to make myself clear.

And we have something better for waking life? Truly better, not just apparently or seemingly satisfactory because of our situation in waking life?

A tree falls in a forest...?

I don't think this does anything per se...but I think it's a valid caution in the vein gibran presents it.

A tree falling in the forest can be demonstrated to have happened. Even if there is no observer when the tree falls, there are still unmistakable physical signs that it has, indeed, made a sound. These signs, perhaps as minute as little scratches from vibrating leaves/needles as the sound energy is transferred to them, could easily be observed after the event itself and the presence of such sound would be conclusively demonstrated.

My point is that, at some point, it always requires an observer...but just because an observer sees it, doesn't make it "real" (which I would claim is your stance vis a vis DMT experiences). There is no demonstration that reality exists apart from personal subjective experiences, is there? At some point, everything that we declare "real" gets filtered through a subjective human, doesn't it?

SnozzleBerry:

Before we go along, are you proposing that there is no such thing as an observation-independent-universe?

I think it would be foolish of us to claim that there is...how could we?

Does science not work by studying "observable phenomena"?

Natural science is an "empirical science, which means the knowledge must be based on observable phenomena and capable of being tested for its validity by other researchers working under the same conditions."

Does this not preclude that which we can't observe? Meaning that all science can claim to study is an observation-dependent universe...or am I missing something here?

If it has to be observable to draw conclusions...you can't draw conclusions without an observer...the observer is what makes it all possible. It is impossible to comment on what exists if you have no observer as there's is nothing observing whatever may/may not exist.

This is one reason you will never hear me say "objective reality"...we have no proof such a thing exists...only "consensus reality".

I’m not sure if the realm of consensus reality is “more real” or “less real” than DMT realms. As I’ve said in previous posts, we determine if something is real by establishing “reality-test” criteria, and then we test a phenomenon against those criteria. If the phenomenon substantially matches the criteria, we call it real. If it doesn’t, we call it imaginary, hallucination, delusion, etc.

The important point to note is that there isn’t a universal “God-given” set of reality-test criteria. It would probably be easy to develop a set of reality-test criteria which, when applied to DMT realms, declared that DMT realms were real. The same reality-test criteria when applied to consensus reality might lead us to declare consensus reality to be illusory. The criteria we use for consensus reality is cherry-picked to ensure that most day-to-day experiences in the consensus reality realm get classified as “real”.

So the question “do you think that there is any more reason to believe that DMT realms are real than that consensus reality at least have decent amounts of pretty consistent traits that makes it more plausible to be real?” doesn’t really make sense. It’s true that consensus reality satisfies more consensus reality test criteria than do many DMT experiences/realms (although I must say that in my experience, some criteria are more fully satisfied by the DMT realm than by the consensus reality realm), but we can’t really say at all what is closer to “real reality”. I don’t think there is such a thing as “real reality” or “ultimate reality”.

We can compare “realities” using any set of reality-test criteria, and declare any of them to be real or not real, depending on whether or not they pass the test. For one set of reality-test criteria, nothing is real. For another, everything is real. So what does it actually mean for something to be “real”?

If entities in one realm are somehow able to communicate information to entities in another realm in a way that seems to violate subjectivity, then we would prove that the two realms in question are related to each other in a particular way. For example, the experiment which claims to be proof of the independent reality of hyperspace if it succeeded involves a subject asking hyperspace entities to factor a large product of two prime numbers – something the subject of the experiment can’t do.

If the subject returns to consensus reality with the correct factors, then some would say “hyperspace is real”! But the experiment doesn’t really say this. All it says is that hyperspace and consensus reality are connected in some way. At most, it says that hyperspace is real relative to consensus reality (and I’m not even sure if that’s true). But since we can’t say if consensus reality is “real”, we certainly can’t say that hyperspace is real based on its relationship with consensus reality.

SnozzleBerry:

Then you assume that there is some body/soul-dualism that requires that our consciousness in its totality is not a part of the physical world. What you have in this proposition is the requirement of some non-physical soul. Our science today suggests pretty clearly that the universe can exist without conscious observers, because there is nothing that implies that such a form of the anthropocentric principle is correct. Conscious observers are not needed in a precise explanatory model for the universe. The laws of our universe can be precisely formulated without reference to conscious observers at all. Besides, you will get yourself in the problem of explaining the universe before consciousness arrived. As long as we and independent measuring devices register the same events in a synchronously manner, this must be because of something external.

The premise you propose lacks validation...you can ask me to accept it all you want, but you have no *proof* that anything can be known to exist without an observer.

To make claims to the contrary is a leap of faith...there's no getting around this...evidence requires an observer at some point.

Body/soul duality has nothing to do with this...if you don't have someone observing something happening (or the aftereffects/remnants) you can't comment on whether or not it happened as you have no evidence as to whether or not it did in fact happen. It's not about what may or may not be true objectively...it's the fact that WE can't know this as our knowledge requires an observer and is therefore, by definition, subjective rather than objective.

I understand that you feel what you are saying is logical and that my presentation is less-so, but you have no evidence on which to rest that assertion as any evidence collected requires an observer.