Jkg20, counterpunch
As far as I can tell, physical reality long predates the evolution of phenomenally-bound minds in the late Precambrian. As I said, I’m a metaphysical realist. But each of us runs an egocentric world-simulation. Phenomenal world-simulations differ primarily in the identity of their protagonist. My belief that I’m not a Boltzmann brain or a mini-brain in a neuroscientist’s vat (etc) is metaphysical. The belief rests on a chain of inferences – and speculation I find credible. The external environment partly selects the content of one’s waking world-simulation; it doesn’t create it:
https://www.hedweb.com/quora/2015.html#immanuel

How do you get from:

each of us runs an egocentric world-simulation. Phenomenal world-simulations differ primarily in the identity of their protagonist. — David Pearce

to:

However, as far as I can tell, the external world is inferred, not perceived. — David Pearce

Egoistic delusion about the significance of my own existence; putting aside the "sonder" of being just a passer-by in the experience of others, does not imply objective reality is subjectively constructed.

https://www.dictionaryofobscuresorrows.com/

Counterpunch
Recall I argue against the view that reality is subjectively constructed. But each of us runs a phenomenal world-simulation that masquerades as the external world. Mind-independent reality may be theoretically inferred; it's not perceptually given.

Recall I argue against the view that reality is subjectively constructed. But each of us runs a phenomenal world-simulation that masquerades as the external world. Mind-independent reality may be theoretically inferred; it's not perceptually given. — David Pearce

If objective reality exists, and we perceive it, surely the natural emphasis falls upon the validity of our understanding - and scientific method as a means to establish objective knowledge.

This then implies a far more systematic approach to the potential benefits of technology - whereas, it seems to me, your phenomenological approach makes no epistemic demands, and so justifies fantasising about technologically derived hedonism - while objectively, barrelling toward extinction.

If you'll pardon my bluntness - I don't mean to be rude, why don't you begin with solving climate change and securing a prosperous sustainable future, before proposing super-longevity, super-intelligence and utter well being?

For what it's worth, I think you're right - those things do hove into the realms of possibility, but only if we survive our technological infancy.

counterpunch
The inferential realist account is more epistemically demanding. The perceptual naïve realist believes that (s)he directly communes with the external world – an approach that offers all the advantages of theft over honest toil. By contrast, the inferential realist tries to explain how our phenomenally-bound world-simulations are neurologically possible. It's a daunting challenge:
https://www.hedweb.com/quora/2015.html#categorize  

Climate change? A prosperous sustainable future? There is no tension here. I promise transhumanists are as keen on a healthful environment and economic prosperity as you are!

Well, until such a time when we can engineer every single life form on earth to do exactly what you think is good, I'm going to read the Dimension of Miracles again.

There's this surreal scene when Carmody finally makes it back to earth. He finds the vegetation rather different than what he remembers, until he meets a T-Rex cub, who kindly invites him for dinner. He then realizes that he is back on earth alright but not at the right time: he's in the jurassic.

So he follows young T-Rex to his home and has dinner with them T-Rex folks. He is the first mammal they encounter who can speak, most mammals they know are quite dumb, so they are fascinated by Carmody, especially when he tells them that he comes from the future. Then the T-Rex father, a self-satisfied, rather conventional fellow, asks Carmody about the future of the relationship between dinosaurs and mammals... To which Carmody politely answers that in the future, the relationship between dinosaurs and mammals is better than it ever was.

Maybe our future relationship with ants will be even better!

Were the inferential realist account an argument based in evolution, that had already acknowledged that the organism evolves in relation to a causal reality; such that the essential accuracy of sensory perception is promoted by the function or die algorithm of evolution, then we can consider how perception works - and I would accept that we experience "an internal representation, a miniature virtual-reality replica of the world."

I don't begin with trying to understand the mechanisms of perception, but rather with the fact of perception. Art, traffic lights, colour coded electrical wires - all refute the idea that:

"representative realism, also known as epistemological dualism, is the philosophical position that our conscious experience is not of the real world itself but of an internal representation, a miniature virtual-reality replica of the world."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Direct_and_indirect_realism

Without that grounding in evolutionary biology, the inferential realist account is just subjectivism with a fresh coat of paint, because the effect is essentially the same. Focusing on the mechanisms of perception, you soon lose sight of the art, traffic lights and colour coded electrical wires that prove enormous commonality of perception of an objectively existing reality, necessary to our survival as a species - both up to this point, and in future.

I wholly accept that:

transhumanists are as keen on a healthy environment and economic prosperity as you are — David Pearce

...but the question, surely - is how we get there from here. It won't be by ignoring the gas leak in the cellar to hang beautiful pictures in the hallway. There's not many people around know the first damn thing about science and technology - and clearly you do, but you're putting the roof on before we've dug the foundations.

Olivier5
Complications aide, sentient beings exhibit a clearly expressed wish not to be harmed. So compassionate biology doesn't entail "engineer[ing] every single life form on earth to do exactly what you think is good". Rather, intelligent moral agents should ensure that all sentient beings can flourish without being physically molested. Genome-editing is a game-changer. Yes, there are some (human and nonhuman) predators who want to prey on the young, the innocent and the vulnerable. But there is no "right to harm". A civilised biosphere will be vegan.

Counterpunch
Modern physics reveals that mind-independent reality is radically different from our egocentric virtual worlds of experience. I say a bit more, e.g.
https://www.hedweb.com/quora/2015.html#johnsearle

A civilised biosphere will be vegan. — David Pearce

A tiger does not apologize.

Sensory perception is limited; but that does not imply that what we perceive is unreal.

Mind-independent reality may be theoretically inferred; it's not perceptually given. — David Pearce

Although I think of myself as more of an indirect realist than a naive realist, I wonder if this is really the correct way to phrase it. Consider that if I am drinking water then it follows that I am drinking H₂O, but also that if I know that I am drinking water then it doesn't follow that I know that I am drinking H₂O – because I don't necessarily know that water is H₂O. Or consider that if I have met Joe Biden then I have met the President of the United States, but also that I only infer that Joe Biden is the President of the United States from the things I have seen on TV or read on the Internet.

So I think there is both an epistemological and a metaphysical aspect to this, and that perhaps metaphysically, waking experience just is a mind-independent reality being "perceptually given", whereas epistemologically, that I am having a waking experience and that waking experience just is a mind-independent reality being "perceptually given" is "theoretically inferred".

Olivier5
True, a tiger does not apologise. Nor does a psychopathic child killer. Their victims are of comparable sentience. Unless rather naively we believe in free will, neither tigers nor psychopaths are to blame in any metaphysical sense for the suffering they cause. But their blamelessness is not an argument for conserving tigers or psychopaths in their existing guise.

Counterpunch
The fact that we each run a phenomenal world-simulation rather than perceive extracranial reality doesn't entail that our world-simulations are unreal – any more than the mind-dependence of our world-simulations entails that extracranial reality is unreal. It's often socially convenient to ignore the distinction and pretend we share common access to a public macroscopic world. But shared access is still a fiction.

Michael
Thanks, a lot to unpack there. I worry that the expression "perceptually given" is doing a lot of work in your account. One's experience of a macroscopic world is an intrinsic property of neural patterns of matter and energy. This kind of experience may be shared by dreaming minds, brains-in-vats, Boltzmann brains – and awake humans who have evolved over millions of years of natural selection. In other words, the experience of a macroworld isn't intrinsically “perceptual” – the extracranial environment is neither sufficient nor necessary for the experience, Rather, one’s phenomenal macroworld has been harnessed by natural selection to play a particular functional role in awake animal nervous systems, namely the real-time simulation of fitness-relevant patterns in the extracranial environment. "Perception" is a misnomer.

If inferential realism / a world-simulation account is correct, then thorny semantic issues arise:
https://www.hedweb.com/quora/2015.html#hardparadox

. Unless rather naively we believe in free will... — David Pearce

But shared access is still a fiction. — David Pearce

You deny the truth of a shared external reality. If you also deny the reality of free will of the individual, as inferred from the individual's capacity to create the external simulation, then how can you ground any moral ethics? What is the cause of human activities if neither the external nor the internal? Where do you position "activities" in general in this schema if they are not caused by the external reality, nor the internal free will? Is activity an illusion? If so, then why do anything?

Unless rather naively we believe in free will, neither tigers nor psychopaths are to blame in any metaphysical sense for the suffering they cause. — David Pearce

What about the suffering tigers anihillate? When their prey is dead, the prey won't suffer anymore. That's chalked up as a positive, right? If life is an abomination, death ought to be a blessing.

Metaphysician Undercover
I believe in the existence of mind-independent reality (cf. https://www.hedweb.com/quora/2015.html#idsolipsism). Its status, from my perspective, is theoretical not empirical. The fact that one can't directly access the world outside one's transcendental skull doesn't make it any less real.

Grounding ethics?
Agony and despair are inherently disvaluable for me. Science suggests I’m not special. Therefore I infer that agony and despair are disvaluable for all sentient beings anywhere:
https://www.hedweb.com/quora/2015.html#metaethics

Olivier5
The problem of suffering can't be solved by tigers killing their victims any more than it can be solved by psychopaths killing orphans. Well-fed tigers breed more offspring who go on to terrorise more herbivores. I wouldn't personally be sad if the cat family were peaceably allowed to go extinct; but most people are aghast at the prospect. So instead, genetic tweaking can allow the conservation of tigers and other members of the cat family minus their violent proclivities.

Pfhorrest
Very many thanks. Yes, I remarked that most critics don't find an architecture of mind based entirely on information-sensitive gradients of bliss to be a genetically credible prospect. If pressed, such critics will normally allow that a minority of chronic depressives are animated entirely by gradients of ill-being. The possibility of people with the opposite syndrome, i.e. life animated entirely by gradients of well-being, simply beggars their imagination. That’s why case studies of exceptional hyperthymics (e.g. Jo Cameron) who never get depressed, anxious or feel pain are so illuminating. The challenge is to create a hyperthymic civilisation.

Terminology? The opposite for our position is dolorism. It's historically rare. More common is the bioconservatism exemplified by Alexander Pope in his Essay on Man (1733), "One truth is clear, WHATEVER IS, IS RIGHT".
Voltaire satirised such an inane optimism in Candide (1759).

Tackling the entrenched status quo bias of bioconservatism can be hard. One way of overcoming status quo bias is to pose a thought-experiment. Imagine humanity encounters an advanced civilisation that has abolished the biology of suffering in favour of life based on gradients of intelligent bliss. What arguments would bioconservative critics use to persuade the extra-terrestrials to revert to their ancestral biology of pain and suffering?

Hi David, I've been dabbling in secular buddhism, evolutionary psychology, and antinatalism on and off over the years and it's cool to see that transhumanism shares common themes and foundations. Are these overlaps recognized in transhumanist circles and if yes, could you recommend readings exploring these common themes, especially in the secular buddhism part?

I have also realized that "hard" antinatalism is impractical so I just left it at that for a long time now but I'm finding that your arguments for transhumanism presents a more practicable alternative. So thanks for holding this AMA and introducing me to this position!

OglopTo
Thank you. You are very kind. The Transhumanist movement is diverse, indeed fragmented. For instance, Nick Bostrom and I both advocate a future of superintelligence, superlongevity and superhappiness, but “existential risk” means something different to an ardent life lover and a negative utilitarian (cf. https://www.hedweb.com/transhumanism/). A commitment to the well-being of all sentience is item 7 of 8 in The Transhumanist Declaration (1998, 2009). This prioritisation probably reflects the relative urgency most transhumanists feel. Superintelligence and superlongevity loom larger in the minds of most transhumanists than defeating suffering.

That said, I'd urge any secular Buddhist to embrace the transhumanist agenda. Recall how the historical Gautama Buddha was a pragmatist. If it works, do it! Indeed, the abolitionist project might crudely be called Buddhism and biotech. The only way I know to abolish the biology of suffering short of sterilising Earth is to rewrite our legacy source code. Other makeshift remedies are just stopgaps. Most technological advances don’t get to the heart of the problem of suffering. We need a genetically-driven biohappiness revolution.

So as a very rough analogy, as I understand it, you think of experience as something like a footprint in sand that may or may not have been caused by a boot, and the extent to which the features of the footprint "resemble" the features of the boot is an open question, as is how we are able to think and talk about the boot when presented with only a footprint?

To hopefully better explain my previous post I offer the different analogy of mixing hot water with coffee beans to make coffee. The relationship between the coffee beans and the coffee isn't merely causal; the coffee beans are directly present in the coffee. Perhaps "mixing" an external world object with one's sensory apparatus "makes" an experience in the same sort of way, with the external world object directly present in the experience. I think this view is somewhat similar to enactivism: "Organisms do not passively receive information from their environments, which they then translate into internal representations. Natural cognitive systems ... participate in the generation of meaning ... engaging in transformational and not merely informational interactions: they enact a world."

Of course, there is still the epistemological problems of knowing that what one has is coffee (a waking experience with a directly present external world object) and not some qualitatively identical coffee substitute (a dream) and knowing the extent to which the features of the coffee (the experience) are features of the coffee beans (the external world object), but I think it may help resolve some of the metaphysical or semantic problems.

The fact that we each run a phenomenal world-simulation rather than perceive extracranial reality doesn't entail that our world-simulations are unreal - any more than the mind-dependence of our world-simulations entails that extracranial reality is unreal. It's often socially convenient to ignore the distinction and pretend we share common access to a public macroscopic world. But shared access is still a fiction. — David Pearce

That so, explain art - and not only creating art, but meaningful discussions about art. Explain what the artist thinks they are doing when painting a picture of a bridge in the fog. And how it can possibly be, that I come along, a hundred years later and say, "Hey - cool foggy bridge, dude!"

The way I see it our sensory apparatus evolved in relation to a causal reality over millions of years, and while limited, is necessarily accurate to reality - as it really exists, to allow for survival. We could not have survived if perception were subjectively constructed.

Since the 1634 trial of Galileo there's been a philosophical conspiracy to down-play science as a means to establish objective truth; starting with Descartes' subjectivism. Methodologically, Mediations on First Philosophy is a weak, sceptical argument compounding a misdirected search for certainty consistent with Church dogma - that argues, what if I'm being deceived by a powerful demon, and all the world is an illusion?

It's a retrograde step, epistemically, when you consider that William of Ockham had long since established the principle of sound reason known as Occam's Razor, "it is vain to do with more that which can be done with fewer." Had Descartes put his hand in the fire, rather than a ball of wax, he'd soon have discovered something exists, both objectively, and prior to "cogito."

Because the simplest adequate explanation is the best - it follows that we evolved in relation to a causal reality, and our sensory equipment is essentially accurate to reality, and similar person to person, to allow for survival. How can it be any other way? Spotting predators, and prey, and ripe fruits in the forest canopy - require we perceive reality as it really is - and allows in the fullness of time, for the creation and appreciation of art.

Michael
Thanks, your striking footprint / boot analogy hadn't occurred to me; but yes, in a sense. I'm still thinking about the coffee! Either way, the difference between dreaming and waking consciousness isn't that when awake one perceives the external world. Rather, during waking life, peripheral nervous inputs partially select the contents of one’s phenomenal world-simulation. When one is dreaming, one's world-simulation is effectively autonomous.

Now for the twist. A Kantian might say that all one can ever know is phenomena. The noumenal essence of the world is unknown and unknowable. But the recently-revived intrinsic nature argument "turns Kant on his head":
https://www.hedweb.com/quora/2015.html#galileoserror

counterpunch
I hope you'll forgive me for ducking questions of art here. However, when it comes to science, I'm a realist and a monistic physicalist, but not a materialist:
https://www.hedweb.com/quora/2015.html#dualidealmat
Taking modern physics seriously yields a conception of reality very different from the world-simulation of one's everyday experience.

David,

If you highlight a passage within my post - as I will do with yours now, and then click the little curly arrow bottom left, next to where it says 2 hours ago, it will transfer the highlighted passage to the text box. Thus:

I hope you'll forgive me for ducking questions of art here. However, when it comes to science, I'm a realist and a monistic physicalist, but not a materialist: — David Pearce

Also, I will get a notification of your reply.

I believe in the existence of mind-independent reality (cf. https://www.hedweb.com/quora/2015.html#idsolipsism). Its status from my perspective is theoretical not empirical. — David Pearce

What exactly do you mean by "theoretical" here? I see this statement as self-contradicting. To say that something is theoretical is to say that it is mind-dependent. To say that reality is theoretical, but mind-independent is to contradict yourself. In other words I don't see this as a valid way to account for the reality of he external world, to say that it is theoretical, yet also mind-independent It can only be one or the other.

Agony and despair are inherently disvaluable for me. Science suggests I’m not special. — David Pearce

Are you not a unique individual? It is this very idea, that what is valuable to me, is valuable to everyone else, which is the root of jealousy, coveting, greed, hoarding, and numerous other vices. This is probably why Plato, in The Republic, centered justice around having a respect for each others differences, rather than the false assumption that we are all the same, which Science doesn't really suggest.

Olivier5
It's possible your recent comment has been deleted. But the reason I don't advocate the extinction (as distinct from genetic tweaking) of the cat family is precisely the visceral responses of outraged cat lovers. Ethically speaking, should we conserve, for example,
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6GATu6KKu2g
[Viewer discretion advised: please don't watch if you already agree that intelligent moral agents should end predation. But in the abstract, "predation" sounds no more troubling than halitosis.]
Civilisation will be vegan.

your recent comment has been deleted — David Pearce

Strange... I wonder what problem they had with it.

Anyway, I suspect felids are not particularly interested in your advice. You are welcome to change yourself into some computer if you want to, but leave cats alone. They can make their own life choices.

Why do you think death is problematic? If suffering is the problem, death is a perfect solution for it. There is a contradiction in hating life as it is and hating death at the same time. Either life is beautiful hence death is bad, or life is shit hence death is a bliss.

But "life is shit and death is bad" makes no logical sense to me.