All right, so it seems like we mostly agree now—cool !
I meant to offer a situation about dreaming that seemed analogous to the situation with consciousness.
Ok, I get it now, but I would still argue that we should assume we’re awake, until we have some evidence to the contrary; thus, the “hard problem of dreaming” is a non-issue. It looks like you might agree with me, somewhat:
This issue actually does become extremely pragmatic as soon as you start trying to practice lucid dreaming. The mind seems to default to assuming that whatever is being experienced is being experienced in a wakeful state, at least for most people. You have to challenge that to get to lucid dreaming.
In this situation, we assume that we’re awake a priori, and we are then deliberately trying to induce dreaming (which should be lucid, a well). So, we need a test that tells us whether we’ve succeeded or not. Thus, we need to develop some evidence-collecting techniques that work even when we’re asleep. This seems perfectly reasonable to me, but the setup is not analogous to your previous one—since we start out with the a priori assumption that we’re currently in the awake state; that we could transition to the dream state when we choose; and that there exists some evidence that will tell us which state we’re in. By contrast, the “hard problem of dreaming” scenario assumes that we don’t know which state we’re in, and that there’s no way to collect any relevant evidence at all.
All right, so it seems like we mostly agree now—cool !
Yep!
Rationality training: helping minds change since 2002. :-D
Ok, I get it now, but I would still argue that we should assume we’re awake, until we have some evidence to the contrary; thus, the “hard problem of dreaming” is a non-issue.
You’re coming at it from a philosophical angle, I think. I’m coming at it from a purely pragmatic one. Let’s say you’re dreaming right now. If you start with the assumption that you’re awake and then look for evidence to the contrary, typically the dream will accomodate your assumption and let you conclude you’re really awake. Even if your empirical tests conclusively show that you’re dreaming, dreams have a way of screwing with your reasoning process so that early assumptions don’t update on evidence.
For instance, a typical dream test is jumping up in the air and trying to stay there a bit longer than physics would allow. The goal, usually, is flight. I commonly find that if I jump into the air and then hang there for just a little itty bitty bit longer than physics would allow, I think something like, “Oh, that was barely longer than possible. So I must not be quite dreaming.” That makes absolutely no sense at all, but it’s worth bearing in mind that you typically don’t have your whole mind available to you when you’re trying to become lucid. (You might once you are lucid, but that’s not terribly useful, is it?)
In this case, you have to be really, insanely careful not to jump to the conclusion that you’re awake. If you think you’re awake, you have to pause and ask yourself, “Well, is there any way I could be mistaken?” Otherwise your stupid dreaming self will just go along with the plot and ignore the floating pink elephants passing through your living room walls. This means that when you’re working on lucid dreaming, it usually pays to recognize that you could be dreaming and can never actually prove conclusively that you’re awake.
But I agree with you in all cases where lucid dreaming isn’t of interest. :-)
You’re coming at it from a philosophical angle, I think. I’m coming at it from a purely pragmatic one.
That’s funny, I was about to say the same thing, only about yourself instead of me. But I think I see where you’re coming from:
If you start with the assumption that you’re awake and then look for evidence to the contrary, typically the dream will accomodate your assumption and let you conclude you’re really awake… it’s worth bearing in mind that you typically don’t have your whole mind available to you when you’re trying to become lucid.
So, your primary goal (in this specific case) is not to gain any new insights about epistemology or consciousness or whatever, but to develop a useful skill: lucid dreaming. In this case, yes, your assumptions make perfect sense, since you must correct for an incredibly strong built-in bias that only surfaces while you’re dreaming. That makes sense.
All right, so it seems like we mostly agree now—cool !
Ok, I get it now, but I would still argue that we should assume we’re awake, until we have some evidence to the contrary; thus, the “hard problem of dreaming” is a non-issue. It looks like you might agree with me, somewhat:
In this situation, we assume that we’re awake a priori, and we are then deliberately trying to induce dreaming (which should be lucid, a well). So, we need a test that tells us whether we’ve succeeded or not. Thus, we need to develop some evidence-collecting techniques that work even when we’re asleep. This seems perfectly reasonable to me, but the setup is not analogous to your previous one—since we start out with the a priori assumption that we’re currently in the awake state; that we could transition to the dream state when we choose; and that there exists some evidence that will tell us which state we’re in. By contrast, the “hard problem of dreaming” scenario assumes that we don’t know which state we’re in, and that there’s no way to collect any relevant evidence at all.
Yep!
Rationality training: helping minds change since 2002. :-D
You’re coming at it from a philosophical angle, I think. I’m coming at it from a purely pragmatic one. Let’s say you’re dreaming right now. If you start with the assumption that you’re awake and then look for evidence to the contrary, typically the dream will accomodate your assumption and let you conclude you’re really awake. Even if your empirical tests conclusively show that you’re dreaming, dreams have a way of screwing with your reasoning process so that early assumptions don’t update on evidence.
For instance, a typical dream test is jumping up in the air and trying to stay there a bit longer than physics would allow. The goal, usually, is flight. I commonly find that if I jump into the air and then hang there for just a little itty bitty bit longer than physics would allow, I think something like, “Oh, that was barely longer than possible. So I must not be quite dreaming.” That makes absolutely no sense at all, but it’s worth bearing in mind that you typically don’t have your whole mind available to you when you’re trying to become lucid. (You might once you are lucid, but that’s not terribly useful, is it?)
In this case, you have to be really, insanely careful not to jump to the conclusion that you’re awake. If you think you’re awake, you have to pause and ask yourself, “Well, is there any way I could be mistaken?” Otherwise your stupid dreaming self will just go along with the plot and ignore the floating pink elephants passing through your living room walls. This means that when you’re working on lucid dreaming, it usually pays to recognize that you could be dreaming and can never actually prove conclusively that you’re awake.
But I agree with you in all cases where lucid dreaming isn’t of interest. :-)
That’s funny, I was about to say the same thing, only about yourself instead of me. But I think I see where you’re coming from:
So, your primary goal (in this specific case) is not to gain any new insights about epistemology or consciousness or whatever, but to develop a useful skill: lucid dreaming. In this case, yes, your assumptions make perfect sense, since you must correct for an incredibly strong built-in bias that only surfaces while you’re dreaming. That makes sense.