Post-Cartesian Theatre - The Pitfall. & Meditation (1770 words)

Mario Kart 7 First Person mode. 

We are very familiar in novels, films and now games with First Person perspective where the world is presented as we would see it if we were there.

First off Daniel Dennett would say this is only possible because our actual experience of "first person" is itself just a novel, film or game that our brain creates. Thus making it easy to simulate. But that is a distraction.

The thing to notice when looking at that Mario Cart game play frame is that its a "film within a film." We can see what our character sees, as though sitting in a cart, but there is also the wider field of our own eyes. In my case--it as though--I am looking through eyes at a computer screen in which there is a first person image of someone sitting in a cart. I can chose to make that person me and sit in the cart and play the game as though I was in the cart. When we play a game we certainly ignore the fact that I really am looking at a computer screen. To make our reflexes sharp we just get into the virtual cart and play.

This is how easy it is to move our self around in our world. It is not so fixed.

Now in previous blogs I've smashed this up completely by noting that everything we can see both near and far must have been already been seen for us to be aware of it! You can't see something hasn't been seen yet! So that distant star sending its light out has already been seen and the light has already hit our retina for us to see it "over there".

When we think about this though we usually make the "first person mistake" of sitting in the "cart" of our body at the centre of the picture. We see the star as over there and the light travelling through space and entering our retina over here. I can see my nose and can work out where my eyes must be and into those comes the light from that distant star. I overlook that this has already happened for the star to even be there!

And now the big kahuna burger of a mistake I made when I was 19. If the star over there has already been seen then all this must be a model in my head. And if that is true then I am "inside" my head. And the real world is actually "outside" the universe! The known world exists as a simulation in a brain, and the "real world" is unknown, pre-experience, and lies outside the universe! A bit like The Matrix where the world we see is just a computer simulation and the real world is people in liquid pods.

The critical difference from Matrix is that in my scenario there is no waking up in the pod. You can't get outside your head any more than Mr Rochester can get out from the novel Jane Eyre. The outside true world is forever unknowable. This is worse than Plato who thought you could get outside the cave.

Ok this is a very complex mish-mash of mistakes and truths.

First off where things are impossible we can just ignore. If you can never get outside your head to see the real world lets ignore it. This is the move I failed to do as a kid. I got stuck into Noumena and Phenomena.

By definition you can never experience a noumenon because then it becomes a phenomenon. But because single noumenon present many phenomena we like to argue there are existing things behind the appearances. Basically Plato. Hegel is the genius here. He says that if all you have is phenomena then start there. So where are the noumena then? He says these are ideas. That is a very much more accurate description of reality than presenting it as made of "solid" but never-the-less unknowable noumena. And this was mistake #1 for me. There is the idea of a real world outside my head, but that is it.

And in fact if we just go to the phenomena and relegate all the complex ideas we completely clear up the mess in one simple move. Bravo Hegel! Shame that Anglo-American Philosophy so rejects him. But that might say more about America and Britain. They did after all destroy Europe!

So where are we with 1st person perspective now. It has dissolved! It is true that everything we see both near and far HAS BEEN SEEN already. There is no light moving around "inside our world" bringing information from the distant thing to us. Everything is already seen and sensed.

So what is the point of the 1st person ME that I can see at the centre of my world. I can see two arms typing at this keyboard and they are attached to a solid body sitting in a chair. And I can see the perspective of the world radiating out from the head on the shoulders of that body. And I can close one eye and then the other to show that the world is being seen by two eyes. And I can push the edge of one eye and create a distortion that upsets the whole view proving that everything I see is coming into the eye and is being seen there. And I can hold up a hand over my eye and block out the entire universe showing also that only light that enters the eye can be seen, and without it there is no world over there. That 1st person ME really is the centre of the world, I can see it and see how I am involved in seeing and making all this come to exist.

Yet we know that everything that we are sensing has already been sensed! How can this 1st person at the centre of the world be both central to observation, and yet be observing things that have already been sensed!

Let me say this again. I look at a computer screen that is "over there" and separate and distant from me. I can see what is written on the screen. Now if I close my eyes then the whole thing turns black. So I can deduce that light needs to come from the computer screen over there to my eye over here. And yet I can also deduce that the computer screen "over there" must have already been seen for it to be seen in the first place!

The problem is that this Me that I see here at the centre of the world is just an empty shell. It is like the blank space behind the Mario Cart in the picture above that anyone can step into. This is quite a shock but that thing at the centre of your world does not exist. It is empty!

Now before we get upset by this. Remember that there are only 2 things here. The Phenomena that we experience and the thoughts we have about them.

The phenomena never go. They are solid and always present. If you need a self still then be aware that the world that you currently sense is the result of your own sensations. The world out there is because of you.

But we shouldn't let thoughts be so important. These ideas are fleeting and not so important. That "self" that we have had at the centre of our world (except when we get into the cart and play Mario Cart it stops being at the centre and gets into a cart) is just a idea.

Some like Richard Dawkins like to put this that what we experience is brain simulation of the real world. I remember he used a VR headset once to persuade people that what they see is "in their heads." But this is just an idea and while it does illustrate that things are not as they seem it is not very helpful to solve the issue.

This is now SRH. The general problem once we start playing "Russian Dolls" is where do we stop?

Once we start putting things inside other things like "Worlds inside Heads" then we start an infinite regress. If Dawkins wants us to think the world is in our heads, then aren't our heads also inside our heads. Nothing has been explained. You don't explain anything but putting things inside other things.

Nothing is inside anything. There are just phenomena and there are ideas. Everything written here is stimulating ideas, but the phenomena are the black marks on white background of the screen and a couple of pictures.

And this leads directly to meditation and enlightenment.

When we meditate we are focusing just on the phenomena. We are supposed to be  taking our attention away from thoughts about those phenomena. Though its much better to have thoughts about the current phenomena. The one to steer away from is memories and imagination. Nimita they are called. Such phenomena are to be ignored as completely as possible and definitely any thoughts about them are not important.

The point of meditation is to see the phenomena as they are. Remember that all phenomena have already been sensed. There is nothing else for us to do. They are already as they are. I think sometimes we try to process phenomena with thoughts to make them how we want, we like the apparent gap between the world and us because we think we "can do something about it." In fact is, everything that appears to us has already been seen by us. There is no hiding.

And so in meditation we just open up and experience the world as it happens, as immediately and honest as we can. Absorb into it.

Once we do that we start to experience the world in ways we cannot even have dreamed of.

And most importantly the 1st person does become completely irrelevant and disappears. It really is nothing but an idea.

So what of those two words that are so banded around of Subject and Object. They really are not useful. But Object would be what lies out there (that really we have already sensed) and Subject would be the thoughts and decisions we make about it after we've processed it again! There are 2 stages here. Original sensation, and then a second go at it where we try to change it.

In meditation we just want the first process of things being sensed. That is where all the magic happens.