

Illusion of mind (2008) - vasuadari
http://ryuc.info/creativityphysics/mind/illusion_of_mind.htm

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tjradcliffe
So I assume this is demonstrating someone's gibberish generator, like:
[http://www.elsewhere.org/pomo/](http://www.elsewhere.org/pomo/)

Even if it isn't, I wish people would stop saying things like this:

"I have a theory of phenomenon X that shows it has a cause different from what
was previously believed. Therefore X is JUST AN ILLUSION!!!!"

The word "illusion" is as tricky to deal with properly as the world "reality"
because as Barbie might say: "Ontology is hard."

"Illusion" is used in two distinct senses:

1) when a phenomenon has a cause that is different from what is naively
assumed, the naively assumed _cause_ is said to be "an illusion". Thus, the
"bend in the stick that passes through the water's surface" is said to be an
illusion because while the bend is perfectly real, it is in the light, not the
stick

2) "illusion" is also used to mean simply "not real" or "non-existent" in an
absolute sense, as in, "The illusion of safety the TSA gives us."

We muddy our language (and therefore our thinking) when we conflate causes and
phenomena. The mind is both a cause (we refer to "the mind" to explain things)
and a phenomenon (we all experience our own minds and most of us who aren't
psychopaths have reasonably effective predictive models of other people's
minds.)

So when someone says "the mind is an illusion" what can they possibly mean?
Obviously it's nonsense to say the phenomenology of the mind is not real: that
would be like saying we see the stick in the water as straight, when we
manifestly don't. So presumably they mean there is a cause that gives rise to
the bend in our perceptions that is different from what we naively think it
is. In that case, saying "An alternative causal account of the mind" would be
vastly clearer.

"X is an illusion" is a formulation that is good for one thing only:
identifying charlatans and nutjobs. For that, it is very effective.

~~~
eli_gottlieb
The basic problem is that a huge number of people claim the mind is noncausal
_in the first place_. On that basis, we might well say that the epiphenomenal,
dualistic Mind is an illusion, even though we all know that the actual, causal
mind is very real.

Also, I started feeling nauseous when the author said the words "energy
consciousness" and closed the tab. It's not just you.

------
Elrac
An unpublished work of Deepak Chopra??

