Is it possible to doubt you are experiencing?

[Speakpigeon]

Maybe, maybe not.

True story:

Many years ago, I was driving in a residential neighborhood after dark. There was a house on a corner which had a high wooden fence shielding their side yard(garden, to the Brits). I had passed this fence many times, day and night. This night I happened to look at the fence and saw a nude woman standing in a full length window, just the other side of the fence.

It's no great mystery. I was traveling at the optimum speed and the cracks between the fence boards allowed my brain to see a ribbon piece and reassemble them into a full picture.

Now, I have the experience of seeing a naked woman in her dining room, while at the same time, I know, I saw no such thing. Perception is reality, but perception can be distorted, or mistaken. There is no true all sensual experience. Everything perceived by the senses is processed by the brain and is subject to a thousand errors before it becomes a conscious thought.

I think the question you should ask yourself is whether she saw you.

Show

Have you tried to see her again?

EB

 

[Speakpigeon]

If others (skeptics) are allowed to doubt your experiences I suppose you can too.

The question is not whether you think UM could doubt his experience but whether you can doubt your own experience (and on the moment you have them).

I guess doubting your own experience on the moment you have it must but a sign of insanity.
EB

 

[untermensche]

That's not my question.

Go start your own thread on that totally different topic since you don't seem to be able to understand this one.

I cannot doubt you are experiencing difficulties in expressing such a simple idea.

The point you're trying but failing to put across has been belaboured by philosophers. The answer is well known. So, why do you think asking people here will get you any extra bonus point in favour of your views?

And why do you keep expressing yourself so poorly that you can't even explain even such a basic idea?
EB

My point is clear and the question is clear.

Which is why it is amazing some think that the experience of giving a command could not be clearly known as an experience of giving a command.

The experience is of giving a command and then the arm moving this way or that, depending on desire.

The experience is clear and there is no doubt this is the experience.

And it is experience that needs to be explained, not fantasies.

 

[PyramidHead]

Whether one can doubt something and whether it is rational to doubt something are separate questions. As LionIRC said, somebody can doubt anything if they try hard enough. But it may not be warranted to doubt something, depending on the circumstances. I agree that the bare having of an experience is not rationally doubt-worthy, but the conclusions we draw from experience about their sources may be validly doubted.

 

[untermensche]

Whether one can doubt something and whether it is rational to doubt something are separate questions.

If there is no way to doubt something can it be reasonable to doubt it?

If you are looking at a dog and experiencing a dog is it possible to not be experiencing a dog?

 

[DrZoidberg]

I experience the sunset.

I experience the cool breeze.

I experience the warm touch.

Is it possible to doubt I am experiencing what I am experiencing?

How is it possible to doubt I am experiencing what I am experiencing?

Yes. If you're having a psychotic episode. Or taking psychadelics. Or just having a normal hallucination. It's always a good idea to question everything.

It's actually normal to hallucinate. The brain mostly hallucinates stuff that we expect to see. So that we don't waste precious brainpower on stuff that probably is fine.

That's why religious people see miracles everywhere and hear the voice of God, even though there's no miracles and God isn't talking to them.

 

[untermensche]

I experience the sunset.

I experience the cool breeze.

I experience the warm touch.

Is it possible to doubt I am experiencing what I am experiencing?

How is it possible to doubt I am experiencing what I am experiencing?

Yes. If you're having a psychotic episode. Or taking psychadelics. Or just having a normal hallucination. It's always a good idea to question everything.

Questioning an experience is not the same as not having it.

If you are experiencing an hallucination then there is no doubt you are experiencing it.

How would you doubt you are experiencing an hallucination if you are experiencing an hallucination?

 

[PyramidHead]

Whether one can doubt something and whether it is rational to doubt something are separate questions.

If there is no way to doubt something can it be reasonable to doubt it?

That depends on what qualifies as a doubt. If someone verbally expresses "I doubt that I am having this experience", does that count? Or are they mistaken? Or lying? Can I doubt that I am doubting something?

 

[DrZoidberg]

I experience the sunset.

I experience the cool breeze.

I experience the warm touch.

Is it possible to doubt I am experiencing what I am experiencing?

How is it possible to doubt I am experiencing what I am experiencing?

Yes. If you're having a psychotic episode. Or taking psychadelics. Or just having a normal hallucination. It's always a good idea to question everything.

Questioning an experience is not the same as not having it.

If you are experiencing an hallucination then there is no doubt you are experiencing it.

How would you doubt you are experiencing an hallucination if you are experiencing an hallucination?

That's a circular argument. If you hallucinate something that you would normally expect to see, you will not react. This is the most common type of hallucination, and extremely common. We all have them many times a day. Most likely there's something in your field of view now which isn't really there.

The reason is because your brain couldn't possibly take in all that information of the things you see around yourself now. The nerves between the eye and the brain doesn't have the bandwidth. That's why when you watch a movie it's like looking out a window. Even though it's just a series of pictures. Computer games and computer graphics use the same techniques, to save on processing power. There's no point drawing something onto the screen if the we can count on the brain to hallucinate it for us. This is called Gestalt Psychology. Studying this was part of my computer degree.

You will only react when the brain hallucinates something bizarre in front of us, that breaks completely with what we expect.

But it's not just things we see. We can hallucinate entire concepts or beliefs. That's how confirmation bias works. If we see evidence of things that we know couldn't possibly be true, our conscious minds won't see them. It'll just filter it out.

But sure, having a hallucination is getting the phenomenological feedback to your brain. But what does that prove?

 

[untermensche]

Questioning an experience is not the same as not having it.

If you are experiencing an hallucination then there is no doubt you are experiencing it.

How would you doubt you are experiencing an hallucination if you are experiencing an hallucination?

That's a circular argument.

It's a question.

How do you doubt you are experiencing what others may see as an hallucination if that is what you are experiencing?

 

[Speakpigeon]

That's not my question.

Go start your own thread on that totally different topic since you don't seem to be able to understand this one.

I cannot doubt you are experiencing difficulties in expressing such a simple idea.

The point you're trying but failing to put across has been belaboured by philosophers. The answer is well known. So, why do you think asking people here will get you any extra bonus point in favour of your views?

And why do you keep expressing yourself so poorly that you can't even explain even such a basic idea?
EB

My point is clear and the question is clear.

So why is it so many people don't get it? You had only one good answer, from WAB.

You seem to lack the most basic empathy that would tell you the way you express your views isn't good enough. You keep plodding regardless of the many clues telling you people don't understand the way you express yourself. You will always get the wrong answers if you don't upgrade to some reasonably good English.

Which is why it is amazing some think that the experience of giving a command could not be clearly known as an experience of giving a command.

The experience is of giving a command and then the arm moving this way or that, depending on desire.

The experience is clear and there is no doubt this is the experience.

And it is experience that needs to be explained, not fantasies.

When you have an experience where it appears you are giving a command, you know the experience itself, but you don't know whether you are indeed giving a command. It may well be your brain doing it, leaving you only the experience as if you were doing it.

Your brain is doing everything you are experiencing and more you're not experiencing. It may be also having the experience in somewhat the same way as a material object possesses mass. No object, no mass. No mass, no object. No brain, no experience. No experience, no brain. I'm not claiming that's necessarily true, but that definitely a possibility and you certainly don't know it's not true. It's also much more plausible than assuming your brain is doing all sorts of things, like perception for example, all of it in ways you wouldn't understand at all save for the science of the brain, and then insists you know for certain it's not doing you as well. Have you noticed how you just disappear when you're asleep? Your views are profoundly illogical given the amount of science that suggests you're most plausibly wrong. Doubt is the only reasonable option.
EB

 

[untermensche]

My point is clear and the question is clear.

So why is it so many people don't get it? You had only one good answer, from WAB.

Speak for yourself.

You don't get a lot.

The question is simple.

How could you possibly doubt that what you are experiencing is what you are experiencing?

If you think that is too complex a question that is too bad.

You seem to lack the most basic empathy that would tell you the way you express your views isn't good enough.

No. I have a lot of empathy for people with cognitive dissonance due to a lack of the ability to think. But that is meaningless.

When you have an experience where it appears you are giving a command, you know the experience itself

You know beyond doubt it is what you are experiencing.

You know beyond doubt the experience of the arm will not move as desired without giving the command.

The command is there before the experience of the arm moves as desired, every time.

but you don't know whether you are indeed giving a command

If the experience of the arm does not move without giving the command you only have experiential evidence that it is the command.

You have no way to doubt it is the command.

It may well be your brain doing it

There is no evidence of that.

And it conflicts with experience. The experience is of doing something not of having something done.

Your brain is doing everything you are experiencing

The brain is somehow creating all the mind experiences and it also creates the autonomous active contemplative mind.

The brain is reflexive and unless damaged it will reflexively move the arm every time the mind commands.

These attributions of every feature of the mind to the brain is just intellectual laziness and absurdity.

 

[Tom Sawyer]

We can doubt what we're experiencing because we know that our perceptions and intellects are limited and flawed, thus allowing us to be wrong about things.

 

[untermensche]

We can doubt what we're experiencing because we know that our perceptions and intellects are limited and flawed, thus allowing us to be wrong about things.

You can't doubt that what you are experiencing is what you are experiencing.

There is no way to doubt that.

You can doubt that the table is "real", you can doubt what is behind the experience, but you can't doubt you are experiencing the table when you are experiencing the table.

 

[Tom Sawyer]

We can doubt what we're experiencing because we know that our perceptions and intellects are limited and flawed, thus allowing us to be wrong about things.

You can't doubt that what you are experiencing is what you are experiencing.

There is no way to doubt that.

You can doubt that the table is "real", you can doubt what is behind the experience, but you can't doubt you are experiencing the table when you are experiencing the table.

Then what are you talking about? The only valid application of the word "doubt" when applied to your experiences is how those experiences match up to reality. For instance, your internal experience of walking across a bridge over a canyon is irrelevant to the reality of gravity. You can imagine the bridge all you want and experience an internal representation of what it would be like to cross it, but the only time that doubt enters into the subject is when you need to check whether or not you can walk on it instead of plunging to your death.

 

[untermensche]

We can doubt what we're experiencing because we know that our perceptions and intellects are limited and flawed, thus allowing us to be wrong about things.

You can't doubt that what you are experiencing is what you are experiencing.

There is no way to doubt that.

You can doubt that the table is "real", you can doubt what is behind the experience, but you can't doubt you are experiencing the table when you are experiencing the table.

Then what are you talking about?

Something it is unreasonable to doubt.

The only valid application of the word "doubt" when applied to your experiences is how those experiences match up to reality.

That is not the only valid application of an examination of the possibility of doubt.

It is just one place where doubt is possible.

It is impossible to doubt you are experiencing the things you are experiencing.

It is possible to doubt what is behind the things you are experiencing.

For instance, your internal experience of walking across a bridge over a canyon is irrelevant to the reality of gravity.

There is the experience of gravity.

Whether it is "real" or just an experience is unknown.

 

[DBT]

If you are experiencing something how do you doubt you are experiencing it?

It's a question of what you are experiencing...

That's not my question.

Go start your own thread on that totally different topic since you don't seem to be able to understand this one.

If you are not experiencing something, be it thoughts, feelings, sensory phenomena, etc, what is the nature of your experience? Can you explain?

 

[DrZoidberg]

Questioning an experience is not the same as not having it.

If you are experiencing an hallucination then there is no doubt you are experiencing it.

How would you doubt you are experiencing an hallucination if you are experiencing an hallucination?

That's a circular argument.

It's a question.

How do you doubt you are experiencing what others may see as an hallucination if that is what you are experiencing?

If it's unreasonable. Have you never asked people around you if they are seeing the same thing as you? It's normal

 

[untermensche]

It's a question.

How do you doubt you are experiencing what others may see as an hallucination if that is what you are experiencing?

If it's unreasonable. Have you never asked people around you if they are seeing the same thing as you? It's normal

There is a difference between not understanding what you are experiencing and not knowing you are experiencing it.

- - - Updated - - -

That's not my question.

Go start your own thread on that totally different topic since you don't seem to be able to understand this one.

If you are not experiencing something, be it thoughts, feelings, sensory phenomena, etc, what is the nature of your experience? Can you explain?

Go start your own thread.

This one is not about that.

Questions about what is not experienced are simple.

What is not experienced is completely unknown.

 

[DrZoidberg]

There is a difference between not understanding what you are experiencing and not knowing you are experiencing it.

That's just a question of intelligence. Smart people distrust their senses more than stupid people.