I mentioned earlier that the Mach-Zehnder interferometer falsifies any idea that photons don't pass through transparent media.

It occurs to me that it takes a deranged zealot to claim that optical fibres don't transmit photons, particularly when used in ultra-secure quantum communication applications. — tom

Yawn...

I really don't know you're having such trouble with reading comprehension. I have *repeatedly* stated in this thread that physically transparent objects allow light to travel through them.

Your diagram is not correct because you forgot the refraction of the light caused by the water, and Light B continues to travel below the water, because water is physically transparent. Light A is the light which actually reaches the retina. I drew the diagram correctly here:



If the image is too small to read just click on this link: larger image of diagram above

Light A passes from outside the material to hit the object yet the reflected light A does not pass through the material to outside it but stops at the surface to form an image. How can this be? Either the surface stops light or it does not. — Barry Etheridge

No. Light A doesn't stop at the surface, it continues on and reaches the retina. We then see an image of the object which is on the surface of the water, but it appears at a depth below the water. A stereogram has the same sort of function - whereby what's seen *appears* to be at a depth beyond/below the surface of where the stereogram is printed/displayed on. That is, below the paper where the stereogram is printed on, or below the computer screen on which it is displayed, both of which are flat, 2D surfaces. The *appearance* of depth is just an illusion, you aren't actually seeing something which is behind the stereogram, you aren't seeing behind the paper or computer screen that the stereogram is displayed on. It merely appears that way to you. In reality what you are actually seeing is the surface of a flat object (eg paper or computer screen)).

Light A reflects uniformly off the surface of the object to form the image on the surface. Light B reflects uniformly off the image to transmit the image to the eye. So what is the source of the distortion? There should be a perfect image of the object and the eye should see that image perfectly there being no source of interference in either light path. — Barry Etheridge

In your diagram you forgot to draw the refraction caused by the water. Light A travels from it's source (eg the sun) to the surface of the water. Because water is physically transparent this means that Light A can travel through it (at a refracted angle). Light A, travelling at a refracted angle, reaches the object below the water and is reflected at a perpendicular angle up towards the surface of the water. The light then stops being refracted because it has reached the air, and so travels at a different angle towards the eye.

There being no rational solution to these self-contradictions it cannot be the case that we are seeing an image on the surface of transparent or translucent materials. There being no such paradoxes in the usual explanation ... — Barry Etheridge

Well, yeah there is. We don't actually need to debate this now because it's a separate issue, but there is a paradox for the direct realist, of the eye needing to function in two completely different ways in order for direct realism to make sense. Those two ways being - the scientific biological function of the eye, and how the direct realist wants the eye to function as 'windows upon the world' which are being looked *through*.

If we look at the biology of the eye, all it does is focus, using the lens, incoming light upon the retinal cells. All retinal cells do is send off (essentially) an electrical charge in response to a light wave being detected. This electrical charge/signal travels through the optic cord and into the brain along a massive series of neurons, eventually reaching the visual cortex. The point being that there is no outgoing process here. Light travels to the retina, electrical charge travels into the brain. There is no means here by which one looks back out at the world. It doesn't make sense. The direct realist however thinks that our eyes are like 'windows upon the world' which we look 'through'. But this isn't supported by the biology of the eye. There is nothing which goes through the eye and back out into the world into the opposite direction towards which the light came in. Nothing goes back in that direction. And yet the direct realist understanding of vision assumes that is the case. The direct realist thinks when he looks at something, it's like an arrow travelling from his eye to the object in the world, as if his gaze goes from his eye to the object in the world and he sees that object in the world. But our scientific understanding of the eye (and the entire visual sensory system) does not support this at all. There is no outgoing process. Light travels to the retina, retina sends of an electrical charge into the brain. So through what means does your gaze travel back from the electrical charge in the brain, to the retina, out the lens of the eye, through the air and reaches the objects in the world? There is no biological means by which this could happen.

It doesn't make sense at all. Which is why in this thread I have repeatedly argued that the scientific/biological understanding of the visual sensory system entails *indirect* realism. Which would involve light in the physical world travelling to a retina, an electrical charge then travels from the retina into the brain towards the visual cortex. A visual perception is then generated by the visual cortex, which is what we visually experience. Our visual field would be located within a brain (because it's internally generated within a visual cortex), and what we see would not be the physical world directly, as if our eyes were windows upon the world, but what we see would be onboard (a brain) internal representations/model of this external physical world, located within the brain. The physical refraction of light occurs in the external physical world. What we see is an internal representation of this. So we couldn't point at a bent stick in water and say "that water *there* is refracting the lightwaves". Because all we are seeing is an internal (within a brain) representation of the physical refraction existing outside our brains in the external world. The physical refraction isn't happening in the water in the cup that we see, rather the physical refraction occurs in the physical external world outside the brain. We merely see an internal representation of this physical process.

If it's created within a physical brain, then the brain that is creating your conscious experience cannot be located within your head, rather your entire body and the world around you - being constituted by conscious experience must already be a conscious creation within a physical brain. You know about your head through sensory experience. If sensory experience is within a physical brain, then your head itself must a conscious creation already within a physical brain.

And if so, from the position of what you exist as - the conscious experience, the physical world including the brain supposedly causing your conscious experience transcends your epistemological access - you cannot know anything about this physical world, including whether it even exists, and whether there is a physical brain there causing your conscious experience. This then collapses into idealism because the physical world has no explanatory value at this point. The idealist then understands the "physical world" as being nothing more than a concept or idea in his mind that has no independent existence. It's a scientific unobservable and the idealist is a scientific antirealist.

When we do science, we notice correlations between consciousness, and (our conscious experience of) brains. Due to the regularity of conscious experience we can record the correlations and then produce a predictive tool based on them. Whereby we can eg predict someone will get Alzheimer's based on observing particular brain scans. This doesn't mean that's what's seen in the brain scan literally causes the experience of having Alzheimer's, all it is is a correlation.

If the lights were out, then could we see through the object? Does the quality that allows the object to interact with light the way it does, if light were in the environment, change when there is no light in the environment? — Harry Hindu

I'm not quite sure what you mean. If I'm understanding the question right, I would say that no, it being dark does not allow you to 'see-through' the object at the world behind it. In both the cases of it being light or dark, you would still be seeing an image on the surface of the clear object. You would just be seeing a really dark image on the surface of the clear object.

Firstly if all we know is representations of objects and not objects themselves then there is an unbridgeable gulf between the object and what is represented; the objects becomes infinitely distant from us. This leads to an inescapable radical skepticism. — John

I agree, indirect realism logically collapses into idealism. Because the external/physical world for the indirect realist doesn't really have an explanatory value. You would be positing an entire 'level' of reality (mind independent world) in order to explain the existence of your conscious experience, but you can have no real knowledge of this mind-independent world because it's beyond what you can access. You can't even know that it causes your conscious experience, so there's no point positing it because it doesn't have any explanatory value. The indirect realist should just become an idealist and analyse the physical world as merely being a concept or idea in the indirect realists mind and has no actual existence.

People like Thomas Metzinger however do flesh out ("Being no-one: The self-model theory of subjectivity") the indirect realist theory, and give a physical, scientific account of our conscious experience under the theory of representationalism. He claims his theory can be tested scientifically and has predictive value.

Secondly, the scientific analysis of perception that indirect/representational realism is based upon must be assumed to give us accurate information about the physical world or else indirect realism cannot be, and indeed no theory at all can be, justifiably based upon it. That the analysis of perception does give us accurate information about the physical world and its objects relies on the assumption that we perceive the physical world and its objects as they are. We have direct access to the world, in other words, and this is direct realism. The scientific analysis of perception, if it is believed to be accurate, can support only direct realism; if it is not believed to be accurate it can support nothing. — John

The indirect realist believes/assumes his representations are accurate depictions of the external world. Your argument only works if you believe representations are not accurate.

Anyway, going back to the thread topic, for the direct realist (you), the question is whether in the external world glass displays an image on its surface, or one can directly perceive the objects behind it. You seemed to argue that because I have not given a physical account of how glass displays an image on it's surface, it therefore cannot be possible:

If there is no coherent physical account of how images could be "on the surfaces of things" then I can see no sense in asserting it or even arguing against it. I don't know what you mean by saying that the things we see are not physical objects. They are physical objects by definition. — John

Firstly, ulexite displays an image on its surface and this is uncontroversial. Do I need to present a physical account of what makes this happen before you believe that there's an image on the surface? Just go buy some ulexite and see for yourself. It's uncontroversial that some physical things can display an image on its surface. All I'm doing is extending this physical phenomena to include all transparent things.

Anyway, if we take what you've been saying - that we perceive objects in the external world, *as they are*, then there's a contradiction here because glass distorts and refracts the way in which see things. We don't see things through glass *as they are*. Fish seen under the surface of water, are not actually in that location due to refraction. So if you're perceiving the fish *as it is*, then how does this make sense because you're not seeing it in the right location. The fish can't be seen in one place, but actually be in another, and yet you are seeing the fish *as it exists in the external world*. Just look at all the illusions associated with clear objects I've posted on the previous page. Are we really seeing the world *as it is* directly when we see these illusions/distortions? Go to a hall of crazy mirrors, if you're seeing yourself *as you exist physically* then your head exists physically as a warped objected with a head the size of a beach ball and a pinched in nose, with wavy shaped arms, and also your body constantly drastically changes shape physically, from being super wide to super narrow to super tall and stretched to bunched up and tiny.

Again, your argument doesn't account for dreams, illusions, and hallucinations. We don't see physical objects in the external world *as they are* when we have these experiences. So what do we see? Some sort of mental construction, some percept/experience generated within the brain. The movement illusion I posted on the previous page is an example of this. There is no physical thing which is moving, and yet we perceive movement. Seeing as though there's no movement in the physical world and yet we are perceiving movement, the movement we see must be some sort of brain generated experience/perception. We are not seeing the world *as it is*.

So what I'm doing here is, fitting my theory into a direct realist account of perception. Either the image is on the surface of the glass, and we directly perceive it in the external world, or you see through glass at the object behind *as it exists* - and if this is so then the world seen through rose tinted glass must be physically pink. The man i posted in the swimming pool must therefore physically exist with his head completely separated from the rest of his body. If you take LSD and perceive the world warping and moving and covered in shifting geometric patters, is this how the world physically exists? No.

Not even direct realists hold that when we see illusions or hallucinations (or have dreams) we are seeing the world *as it exists*. This is the difficulty with naive/direct realism, in that it really struggles to account for these. The direct realist is in this position of asserting that only a very particular type of perception gains him direct access to how the world physically exists (obejects seen in the daytime, with clear lighting, while not being under the influence of drugs or have an sort of perceptual illness, including bad vision, and you can't be perceiving an illusion, mirage, hallucinating or seeing through clear things). What about the perceptions of animals, or even babies? They wouldn't perceive the world at all like we do. Why does the way you perceive the world give you direct access to how the world really exists outside yourself, but yet, how say a fish or dog or any other organism sees the world doesn't allow it to see the physical world as it exists? Why is your visual field a direct perception of the external world but the fishes not? And if the fish does not see the world as it is then what does it see? An internal representation? This is a very human centric view.

If there is no coherent physical account of how images could be "on the surfaces of things" then I can see no sense in asserting it or even arguing against it. — John

I don't know what you mean by saying that the things we see are not physical objects. They are physical objects by definition. — John

You do realize hallucinations, illusions, and dreams exist, right? Do you also see there being no sense in asserting the existence of hallucinations? I assume not. So we have here a case in which we DO NOT have direct access to physical objects as they are, and yet we are perceiving something. What are we perceiving? We see things in our dreams which are not physical objects. We perceive all manner of illusions where there is no physical correspondence. There is no physical thing moving here, and yet we perceive movement:

You seem to be suggesting that we see brain images instead, but that notion is unintelligible, because if there are no physical objects then there is no physical brain either. — John

You don't seem to understand representationalism/indirect realism. Representationalists hold that both "brain images" and physical objects exist. They hold that what we have to access to are "brain images", which are internal representations of physical objects in the external world.

It would appear to me that you're suffering from a bad case of naive realism, and don't really have a basic grasp on the various theories of perception. The following article is a good introduction:

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/perception-problem/

I don't know what you mean by "an image projected on the surface". My understanding is that, according to the physical understanding of seeing ( which is basically all we have to work with) there is no image projected anywhere, but rather light reflected off objects passes through the medium of air, any other transparent medium, or even a vacuum, and then passes through the transparent surface of the eye to fall upon the retina; where it stimulates rods and cones, and electro-chemical nerve impulses are then produced which travel via the optic nerve to stimulate the visual cortex, which produces the experience of seeing anything. — John

Would you agree that this would entail indirect realism/representationalism? As in, the visual cortex internally generates a visual field experience, with this visual field being within the brain, and therefore what we see is not the physical world directly, but rather an internal representation/model of the physical world. The brain takes in data from the physical world through the various sense organs (whose job is to convert physical phenomena - light waves, sound waves, etc, into neuronal impulses), collates and processes this data into an internal experiential model (with the model being all we directly have access to) of the world beyond it. Do you agree with this?

If so, then we can discuss 'images displayed on the surfaces of clear objects' because it is not actually the physical objects which we see around us. What we see are internally produced (by a physical brain) experiential representations (note the representations don't have to be accurate, as if our visual field is just a smaller scale version of how the physical world exists - all the representations need be is evolutionarily successful, point being that because we see an image displayed on the surface of glass does not actually mean there's an image on the physical glass in the external physical world). Because we are not actually directly in contact with the physical world, what's seen are internally generated representations/a model/internal approximation. So we can discuss images on the surfaces of clear things without debating how this is *physically possible*, without arguing over the mechanism by which the image is displayed, because what we are seeing is NOT a physical object. It's internal, experiential, and produced by a physical brain.

Do you see the point? This physical theory of perception entails indirect realism/representationalism. What we see is not actually the physical world, and how the physical world exists. The brain can internally model images on the surfaces of clear objects. The image we see on clear objects, is not an actual image on a physical object in the external world - it's an internally produced experience. Really, it can internally model the world however it wants. You could say the same thing about colours - the physical understanding is that there is no colours in the physical world, things don't actually look green or red or etc. Colour is an internal experience produced by the brain as a way of representing different wavelengths of radiation in the physical world. In the physical world, all light is is wavelengths of radiation. Our retinas respond to only a small range of the lengths of radiation, firing neuronal impulses only in response to radiation in that range. It internally produces using the data collated from all these various neuronal impulses firing off an experience of colour - the quales of red, blue, green, etc. So the point is that the brain can internally produce an experience of an image on the surface of glass, even though there may not be one in the physical world, in much the same way as it can internally produce colour experiences, even though things don't look red,blue,yellow in the physical world.

We can ask the question like this - how does the physical brain internally represent/model physically transparent objects which exist outside itself in the external physical world? To take a pane of glass for example, I say that the physical brain internal models glass to itself as if the depth of ones visual field does not extend beyond the surface of the pane. So what I mean is that if you remove the pane, the depth of your visual field, phenomenologically, extends out all the way into the surface of whatever objects are behind the pane of glass. Note here that we are not discussing the depth of the physical world or anything like that - because our entire visual field is an internal representation. When we remove the pane, the depth of our visual field - how far it is from our faces to the things (which aren't the physical things, they are internal representations of those things) that we are seeing extends/gets bigger/longer. The distance between our eye and the object it terminates at/extends to, goes from extending merely to the surface of the pane of glass, to the objects which are behind the surface, when the pane of glass is removed. When the pane of glass is refitted, the depth of our visual field becomes shorter, going from extending from all the way out onto the surface of the objects which are beyond the windowless window frame, to being reduced backwards and now only extending as far as the inner surface (the surface of the window facing your eyes) of the window pane.

Tell me if I'm not being clear btw.

So the illusion - the misinterpretation that people make when it comes to clear objects, is that they errenousoy believe the depth of their visual field extends further than it actually does. They think that their visual field extends all the way beyond the window pane and ends at the surface of the objects behind the pane, when in reality they are only seeing as far as the window pane. The reason they are making this interpretation, is because the image which is displayed in glass is extremely high definition and realistic, to the point that the vast majority of people (I've literally never heard of anyone else understanding glass like I do) mistake the objects in the image for actually being the objects behind the pane of glass. They think the depth/extent of their visual field is longer than it is.

If the question is then asked, "but how on earth does glass display an image? There's no pixels in glass like a TV screen, how does it do it? What's the mechanism?" the answer is that we are not actually the physical pane of glass in the external physical world. The pane of glass which we see does not contain within it any mechanism for producing the image displayed on its surface, because the pane of glass is already being produced by a mechanism (that is, physical neuronal processes through some mechanism produce internal visual experiences). The same mechanism which produces the window frame is the same that produces the image displayed on the surface of the window pane. Physical neuronal processes produce the experience of the window pane, and likewise produce the experience of the image on the surface of the glass. Nothing in the glass produces the image on its surface, because the window is itself an internal experience produced by a physical brain.

Do you get it?

I also want to say that I'm not actually a physicalist, I don't believe there is an actual physical world, I'm just explaining my theory here in this thread framing it under a physical theory of perception, because it seems people will be able to grasp it better that way. If you just say that a physical theory of perception does NOT entail representationalism, as in "light from physical objects travel to the retina which sends off neuronal impulses to the visual cortex AND THEN you are back out of your brain having direct access to the physical world", it would still not have any bearing on my theory because I'm not discussing the epistemology of our entire visual fields. As in, I'm not arguing about what we have access to ontologically with our vision (eg the physical world, internal representations, idealism). I'm discussing whether the things which are seen 'through' glass is actually an image on the surface, or are the objects beyond. Not whether the objects are physical or not.

I could make this same post but argue in terms of direct realism, so the direct realists find it easier to understand what I'm saying. But I shouldn't have to do either because this entire theory is about the experiential depth of our visual field (how far away the objects in glass are to us - are they on the surface, are do they appear to us to be beyond the pane). For the direct realist the image they are seeing would be on the surface of the glass in the external world (if the question is then asked "BUT HOW IS THAT POSSIBLE?" then I suggest the direct realist buys a piece of ulexite and sees for himself that images appearing on the surface of physically transparent objects (ulexite allows light waves to travel through it)) IS POSSIBLE AND DOES HAPPEN ALREADY. If they demand an explanation for how images appear on glass and water, then I demand if them an explanation for how images appear on ulexite. Nobody really knows how but the point is that it does happen and is possible.

For the direct realist the question is whether there's an image on the surface of glass in the physical world, or whether your gaze can penetrate through physically transparent objects and see what's behind directly.

For the indirect realist it's whether the brain internally models physically transparent objects as having images on their surfaces, or whether it internally models in its visual field the objects behind the clear thing so that clear things are internally modelled as "see-through". As in when the brain internally models depth, does the depth end at the surface of the glass or does it extend beyond the glass to objects behind it.

For the idealist it's much like the indirect realist but just drop the reference to the brain producing the visual experience. Does the depth of our visual field extend to the surface of glass/clear things, or do we see further, through clear things to the world behind/beyond.

Watch that video on ulexite, that's probably the best way to grasp my theory. Ulexite does present an image on its surface, it has fiber object properties, the light from behind can travel through it. The theory is that it's the same kind of thing happening with glass and other clear things, except the image is far clearer/high def, so clear in fact that the overwhelming majority of everyone ever does not recognise that it is an fact an image, they think what they are seeing is actually the things behind/beyond the surface.

But It can't be the things beyond, due to all the perceptual 'quirks' associated with clear things, which I have outlined all the images I linked above. We can't be seeing the actual spoon within a cup, for example, when the spoon we see is facing the wrong way is completely separated in two. It's an image if a spoon on the surface, the actual spoon is within the cup, and is not facing the wrong way and disjointed.

Agree now?

The difficulty there is, the soul, the 'cogito', is never an object of experience. To say that it is 'something' is precisely to reify an abstraction. Why? Because the Cartesian 'res cogitans' was an abstraction which then became reified, i.e. treated as an actual object or something that exists. There is no such thing, but that doesn't mean 'the soul doesn't exist'.

What has an experiential felt quality of 'mineness'? Actually, nothing does. It is wholly and solely a quality in consciousness. — Wayfarer

I'm quite certain Descartes thought the 'thinking thing/substance' actually existed, and wasn't just some non-existent abstraction he falsely believed exists. I can't tell whether you're arguing against my understanding of Descartes, or agreeing with the post?

Talking about it as a 'something' projects it as 'existing', which just results in confusion, because there is no such thing 'out there somewhere'. —

To be fair nobody actually knows this. If the 'thinking thing' is out there beyond what we can experience and access, then we cannot know for sure whether it exists or not.

Ulexite/TV rock for example, is physically transparent (light can travel through the object) and yet it is not 'see-through'.

Re what I was getting at about straw men, what is the difference, in your view, between "allowing light to travel through the object" and "having a property that enables seeing the object behind the transparent object"? — Terrapin Station

It doesn't really matter though. Whether glass is see-through or not is not dependent on the amount of people who treat "transparency" as a synonym of "see-through".

You seem to think that "allowing light to travel through the object" is synonymous with "being able to see the objects behind the physically transparent object".

Or in other words, how do you believe that most folks believe that "having a property that enables seeing the object behind the transparent object" works? Do you believe that they believe something other than "the property is simply allowing light to travel through the object"? —

I'm not even sure most people have a theory about how it is that objects are "see-through". I'm pretty sure they just see glass, and believe they're seeing the objects behind the glass. I suppose if pressed a lot would say something about physical light.

"Allowing light to pass through the object" is a physical description of an objects property (transparency).

"Being able to see the objects behind the physically transparent object" is a description of ones visual experience.

They're two different *kinds* of description, which belong in two separate domains (physics, and phenomenology). You appear to be conflating the two and muddling then up. It doesn't matter that the majority of people also do this as well. Whether you can see the objects behind glass or not, is not determined by how many people think they can.

That is the issue. How can transitory pleasure be a purpose if it is without meaning and doesn't stay consistent? — intrapersona

I look at it like, purposes only apply to individual ends and aims. I eat because it am hungry, find warmth because I'm cold, do activities because I'm bored, drink because I'm an alcoholic :), drive my car because I want to go somewhere, etc. I don't think you can combine all these separate purposes for separate actions, under an overall umbrella purpose. So that you eat because you're hungry, and drink because you're thirsty, and yet you both eat and drink because of a larger overall purpose like say living for god, experiencing pleasure, improving the world, whatever purpose you pick. It's like doing something for one reason, and yet you're *really* doing something for another reason.

We don't really live for any particular reason. That we continue to live is more a side effect of satisfying our competing needs and desires (eg food water warmth). Living is the default state, so you don't need to come up with a reason to live, because it happens regardless. Your reasons have no bearing on whether you live or not. Let's say you decide your reason to live is to experience pleasure. If you change or stop this reason you don't just drop dead automatically.

A more relevant question is whether there is any reason to commit suicide. But even then, you don't just die when you come up with a reason(s), and you can suicide without a reason anyway.

Living is the default state, so you don't need a reason for it. Although a lot of people do seem to find it psychologically gratifying to feel as if they're living for some grand meaning or purpose. But then the question is not what's my reason for living, but rather what reason should I posit (for living) in order to psychologically gratify myself (and not, to actually live, because that happens anyway).

There's definitely a sense of moral superiority (or, smugness) coming from the left. Like you say, a lot of leftists were thinking that only bad immoral people voted for Trump, and good people voted for Clinton. Clinton even made this explicit with her comments about "deplorables". The left even tried to extend it to sexism, as in if you don't vote for Clinton you must be a sexist, and sexists are bad people. And you wouldn't want to be a bad person now would you?

The same thing is happening with Brexit, or to anyone in Europe who doesn't think it's a good idea to have their country completely overrun by Muslim refugees (or, 'economic migrants'). Or anyone who thinks that marriage should now be extended to include same sex couples. Only a bad immoral person would have any of these opinions, and you're not a bad person, are you?

This claim to moral superiority is primarily a way for leftists to politically influence and control others. Basically it's an exploitation of people's sense of morality - their desire to be good people and do the right thing. The leftists capitalise upon this (good) trait, co-opting the narrative of what's morally right and wrong, so that it's up to the authority of the leftist to decide (and not say, individuals) moral truths. In this way the leftist doesn't need to argue for his/her political agenda, they don't have to actually convince and show people why they ought vote for x, or have xyz opinions, or xyz beliefs. Rather, all the leftist need do is present their political agenda as if it's the obvious moral choice - the self-evidently right thing to do, and shame and deride anyone who thinks otherwise. "Bigot! Racist! Sexist! Xenophobe! Transphobe!" - for the leftists, accusations and shame tactics like these substitute for political debate. Why? Because it works!

Good, moral people generally try to avoid offending others. Because being offended by someone/thing is a kind of harm for that person. Good people try to minimise their harm upon others. And when this avoidance of causing harm, is combined with the unexamined idea that something which offends another person, whatever it is and basically for whatever reason must be stopped, banned, shunned, avoided, then you end up in utterly absurd situations, such as considering anyone a bad person because they don't want babies to be ripped apart alive because their mother wants them dead.

How the left manages to control the narrative about what's right and wrong, is through this attitude/arrogance that their political beliefs are self evidently moral/correct, and the mere consideration of an alternative makes one a bad person. This is because when all the leftists do this, and they're generally pretty loud and visible about it (because unlike the political right, they're not socially ostracised or shamed for sharing their politics), people (especially young people) get the impression that everyone has these beliefs, and so if everyone thinks something is self-evidently immoral, it's a fairly large step to think independently and oppose all these people. It would be much easier to simply go with the grain and unthinkingly accept the narrative. A significant way leftists share this 'morality narrative' is through control of the mainstream media - TV news channels, newspapers, most of the internet. These all tend to have a left-leaning agenda. So when people see almost everyone acting like voting for Trump is just so self evidently morally wrong and makes one a bigoted bad person, in the newspaper, on the TV news, on the internet, and also through social media like twitter and Facebook, it really can seem as if that's the truth. Is it even worth making up your own mind and forming your own opinions, when the correct opinion is just so obvious? It also doesn't help that you can be shamed and ostracised if you do it anyway - another disincentive.

However, I think what we are seeing lately is a backlash across the western world against the leftist monopoly on moral truths. People are waking up to how their good nature is being manipulated and exploited for political gain, and (I hope) are starting to form their own political opinions which are not just what the media and their peers tell them to think. The election of Trump was (among other things) a reaction, a sort of payback or punishment, spite towards the political left. The years and years of constantly having people tell you how to think, what to believe and who to vote for by arrogant screeching leftists, it all just boiled over and a lot of people were like actually fuck you.

Of course I'm making massive generalisations here, but there is some truth to it. The monopoly on moral truth really needs to be removed from political discussions, so that the actual issues and policies can be debated. This American election cycle was basically the left/democrats calling anyone who thinks or votes differently an immoral bigot, mostly that's the political right, and the right saying "no, we're not", and having to defend themselves. Or worse, having to hide themselves, literally keep their political beliefs and opinions a secret for fear of being shamed or ostracised, as if living under a dictatorship. So many people hid their political opinions that accurate polls literally could not be conducted. The election result was an upset because of it.

If only we could set aside our moral judgments of others, keep our insults to ourselves and just sit down together to discuss the actual policies and issues. All this "you're a bad person you're a racist bigot" and "no I'm not you're just a mentally ill leftist" gets us nowhere and in fact leads us to a point where a man like Trump seems a viable option as president. I mean the guy is a clown. But when the alternative is to vote for a corrupt pathological liar in order to not get shamed as a bigot, he starts to seem appealing.

Oh well, we're stuck with him now. I'm hopeful he makes a good president and delivers on at least some of his promises.

This brings me back to another point of Dukkha's: The idea of 'ownerless' experience. It seems to me that 'mineness' is essential (even if it's a lower karma-compromised calcification of a deeper experiential stream or storehouse ( Wayfarer ) ) because that's precisely what explains the apprehension felt at our own impending torture. If all experience is ownerless, then everyone should be well afeared of anyone's torture, past or present. — csalisbury

We could draw a distinction between ontological ownership, and experiential ownership. So an ownerless experience would have no ontological 'owner' (eg a soul, Cartesian ego, something like that), but would have the experiential felt quality of 'mineness'.

So it wouldn't be the same thing which dreads the torture and then experiences it. Because there isn't actually 'multiple' experiences, we don't actually have an experience at T1 and then another at T2. We don't actually exist at two different times. We do think about the past as if "I existed then, and had x experience at y time". Or even "I didn't exist then" in the case of the world before our births. But in reality we never leave the present, we exist here, present, in an ongoing process of experience.

This is why I think we're making some big mistake in conceiving of time as linear. We might practice some mindfulness and be aware of the contents of our experience, and then ask ourselves what is persisting from one moment to the next, and be stumped. But it could just be the case that the question is ill formed, because it assumes a linear type existence. The same type of question as say "what's infinity x 19?" Where the question seems legitimate, but we're stumped for the answer, but really that's not how maths works making the question non sensical.

We do think of ourselves as linear, as being the same 'undergoer' of experience now that underwent experience in the past, and will do so in the future. Perhaps experience is not ontologically linear, but yet it feels that way experientially. There exists the presence of experience. A past and history of this experience is in a sense mentally projected behind/before the present, and mentally projected forward, as we will experience *then*. But we never actually will get to the future, we don't exist other than now. So what I mean is that the present doesn't actually move anywhere, it doesn't go toward a future, coming from the past, ontologically. Rather, the future and past are entirely experiential, built from our mental projections ahead and behind (ok it's more complicated than it just being an 'idea in your head' especially with history, with all the things in the world seeming to have their own history, but the point is this is not ontological but rather experiential).

So we are present, and the present we might say is ontologically stationary (it doesn't move ahead like a travelling arrow), we merely project a future ahead of our presence, and project a past behind/before this present experience right now, and this builds the linearity of time and ourselves. As if we exist over a linear expanse. So if we imagine a piece of white string, and someone has got a highlighter and coloured the string in a morse code like pattern. A long dash coloured with highlighter, a short dash of just plain strain, another longer dash, a small dash of plain string, etc. And so the part of the string which has been highlighted represents our periods of consciousness, and the plain string represents periods of non consciousness (deep sleep, anaesthesia etc). The string itself represents linear time. So if we imagine the direction of time from left to right, where we exist is the point on the string which is currently being drawn on with highlighter, travelling from left to right. As we move from left to right we leave behind facts, like a record of when in time we were conscious, and we weren't. The string exists ahead of us waiting to drawn on with highlighter. Hopefully I'm making this analogy clear.

The point being, that this conception of the way we exist, I suspect, is completely wrong. In this torture scenario, we think of ourselves as being at the point on the string which is currently being highlighted, in a left to right progression. We think of the present as existing within an expanse of time which transcends it ahead and behind, and is moving from the past and into the future, leaving behind a record of itself as it travels along. From our position on the string, we think that we existed in the past, so we existed to the left of where we are on the string at an expanse of the string which represents say yesterday, and we think we existed across that expanse of string and experienced fear and dread of the torture experience which will be some time in the future which the present, where we currently are on the string is travelling towards. All parts on the string which are coloured with highlighter represent the times which we existed/experienced/were conscious.

So again the point is that this entire way of conceptualising time is not correct. We didn't actually exist in the past (there is no highlighted string which transcends *this* present experience(ing)), nor will we exist in the (ontological) future. We exist here, present, as an ownerless experiencing (verb). An aspect of how this ownerless experience exists is the (mental) creation of linear time. Which is created by a projection of 'me/myself/mineness' ahead into a linear future ahead of us, and behind us into a past where we existed up until the present. We mentally build our existence through time, making it an experiential/mental thing rather than time actually existing outside our experience (a past and future actually existing, a past which contains facts about what happened).

So he question, why do I dread tomorrow's torture, is because, all that exists is an ontologically ownerless experiencing, an aspect of which is a mental projection of a tomorrow which exists ahead of what's present (the experience) and towards which this experience is travelling. What's projected is a sense of me/myself/mineness/my experience/the same haver or undergoes of experience, both behind into a linear past and ahead into a linear future. This projection of ahead and behind creates and builds this illusion of existence across time, of existing in a yesterday, and a 'will exist still in a tomorrow'. We say that it will be the same me/subject of experience/self which felt yesterday's fear experience of future torture, and will feel tomorrow's experience of future. But ontologically there is not future or past, today nor tomorrow. These do not exist other than as aspects of an ownerless experience. Now there's still questions to answer such as, what separates one ownerless 'experiencing' from another. And how is the experience unified, or if that too is an illusion it needs to be explained.

So to sum up another rambling post :) : time is not ontologically linear, so therefore any questions about existing now and in the past, or now and in the future, and per the OP; now and in a future lifetime are conceptually wrong. Any questions which assumes an existence of ourselves anywhere other than *this* present 'experiencing' make no sense and can't be answered (much like infinity divided by twelve). We fear the future because we project a future ahead of ourselves in which we exist, we likewise project ourselves into a past behind us. This projection of a self builds/creates this notion of continued existence through time. But In reality (ontologically) neither exists. All that exists is the presence of 'experiencing'. An ownerless process/doing/verb.

Thoughts on this? I'm not fully committed to this idea but I think there's sense in it. Time not being linear dissolves all the questions like surviving gaps in consciousness, existence through time, the question of existing again after this lifetime. A lifetime is under this theory nothing more than the sum of the mental projection of a self back until a birth before and ahead up until a death. We do project a past behind our births as well, but that projection loses the sense of "I existed then", it's a more objective type of time projection. A Christian might project back objective time 6000 years, and project back his own existence/himself x number of years depending on how long he understands himself to be alive. A person who takes scientific theories to be true would project backwards 12 billion years of objective time, and then his own self in the same manner as the Christian. There would be no sense of existence through time, of the 'same self', of continuing to exist as the same 'undergoer of experience' without these projections. There would just be the presence of experiencing, which is also all there I seven with those projections, but the difference when they are taken away is it doesn't even *feel* like there's a continuing me which exists through time. So ontologically in neither case does a persisting self exist, but experientially it is built when those projections are done/experienced. All that ontologically exists is a ownerless experience, so by that I mean let's take the visual field as an example. There isn't a seer, owner or a looker, nobody nor nothing is having that sense experience, rather that sense experience - the raw qualia you could say, just exists there as a brute fact of the universe (in the same way a physicalist thinks the physical world exists - nothing holds the physical world in existence, nothing causes atoms to exist, they just sort of exist by their own will, holding their own selves in existence). And in the same way two atoms can be in existence as a brute fact/thing according to the physicalist, so too can multiple visual fields.

What I was asking for, rather, is basically a definition of what "see-through" means. — Terrapin Station

That's what I gave: "This is what we mean by 'see-through'. Whatever is behind the transparent object is what's being seen. The same thing which we would be seeing were the transparent object not there."

Something "see-through" would be "see-through" even if you're not seeing an object through it, no? That is, imagine that we put a see-through object in a vacuum. Have the properties of the see-through object changed? —

I don't know what you're getting at. We would say the object has the property of transparency. If you're a physicalist (who doesn't understand the illusion) you would say that transparent objects are 'see-through'. And that transparent objects continue to have the property of transparency when nobody is looking 'through' them.

"Transparency" is a physical description of an object. It describes the property the object has, of allowing light to travel through the object.

"See-through" is an intuitive description of the way we perceive transparent objects. We think that when we look at transparent objects, we can see the objects which are behind the transparent object. We (not me) think of physically transparent objects as being 'see-through'. Intuitively it seems as though that is the case, that we are seeing through the object. But we are not.

My argument is that our intuition that we can see the objects behind a physically transparent object is wrong.

Right. And how are you defining "see-through" (also versus how you think that other people are defining "see-through")? — Terrapin Station

That it is the very same object which is being seen, window or not. It's the same road being seen whether a windscreen is fitted in ones car or not.

So if we take how the direct realist sees the wrold, which is that what he sees is how the world exists, and it IS the external world which is being seen (rather than say a representation). The direct realist sits in a car with no windscreen fitted and looks out at the road ahead in the external world. Someone then fits a windscreen. The direct realist thinks that it's the very same road in the external world which he is looking at through the windscreen. In both cases, (he believes) the same object is being seen.

That is what we mean by 'see-through'. It means we can see the same object which is behind whatever transparent thing is in the way (eg windscreen) which we would be seeing if the transparent thing were not there. The transparent object does not block how far we can see ahead, in the same way that a wall does.

This is what we mean by 'see-through'. Whatever is behind the transparent object is what's being seen. The same thing which we would be seeing were the transparent object not there.

But it seems obvious that the existence of the soul at least must consist in memory and unity. — John

But these are experiential. Isn't the soul that which is undergoing the experience?

I would say that it is memory and the sense of unity, that is soul and not so much karma, that is central to the notion of identity. — John

But, doesn't something have to be already in existence that's experiencing those memories and that sense of unity. Otherwise it would be like, no self exists, then memories of prior experiences are had, and the self arises as a sort of construct based on this.

That doesn't make sense because there already must be a continuos experience in existence, in order for one to have had prior experiences that one is remembering. The experience must already be having had by a continuos identity, *before* one forms and has memories. Otherwise you couldn't have had the prior experience that you are remembering, because you wouldn't have existed.

It's like saying "the self arises from a continuous ongoing experience." But, in order for experience to be ongoing some sort of identity/subject must already be in existence. Otherwise the experience could not be continuous. An ongoing experience means that whatever experiences at T1 must be the same thing experiencing at T2.

How can we understand periods of non consciousness? If you actually cease being conscious entirely when you're knocked out, or when in deep sleep, or under anaesthesia, how is it that you survive the gap in conscious experience? Why don't you just stay unconscious and then something else experiences waking up? Because you do survive the gap, so doesn't that mean that you must continue to exist in some way through periods of non consciousness? Otherwise you'd be popping in and out of existence, and yet it's still the very same identity/self/'you' having the experience.

How do we explain the persistence of self/identity through gaps in conscious experience? The same 'thing' feels or knows about or undergoes the experience before the gap, as does after the gap. You experience pain before you are anaesthetised, and then you experience pain after you come to. Why do you not just cease to exist and then something else experiences the pain after the gap?

This suggests to me that perhaps the self/subject/identity/'thing which is undergoing conscious experience, is not itself experiential, or arises from experience. Seems like it must exist outside conscious experience in order to survive the gap. If the self is a construct, then wouldn't it be a different/separate construct after the gap than before? How could a construct of self arise through say memory, then cease to exist at the moment of unconsciousness, and then another construct of self arises after the period of non consciousness, but it's also the same construct as the first one, because you felt the pain before the gap and now you're feeling it after.

We experience right now, here in this present. We experience a memory in the present and project a past behind us, as if we existed before the present. We project a future ahead of us, as if we are going to reach the future, and be the same self in the future. "It will be me that has the experiences in the future."

We think of time as this linear track, which actually exists outside our present experience, and our present experience is travelling along this track leaving behind it a past (containing facts) and heading into a future ahead. As if we are a train carriage travelling along a railway track. I think it's more like we are the railway carriage, and we're stationary, and the track we are travelling along supposedly, is just an idea in our minds. A projection of the same identity behind us, and the same identity which we will be, ahead of us. But even if this is the case, there must still exist some sort of fundamental identity, right? Because the present is a constant change, and yet we persist through (as?) it.

What strawman? I'm arguing against the idea that clear things are see-through. Again, this theory can be discussed without arguing over physical theories of light and perception. It's irrelevant, I'm arguing over what we see, not how we see.

Quit your mansplaining, it's triggering me!

I think what's going is that these "progressive" cry-bullies are preying on (mostly white) people's desires to be desperately seen as not a bigot, or racist, or sexist, or transphobe, etc. If you say call one of these people (who love virtue signalling) racist, sexist, etc, they apologize and change their behaviour. In this way the "progressive" gains control over the behaviour of other people. These people love the feeling of power and control over other people, because they've never really experienced it before. This is why lately we're seeing this massive proliferation in talk about, and accusations of racism, sexism, etc. These people have got a little taste of power and control over others and they want MORE. I think one of the reasons Trump was elected was a backlash (or 'white lash') against this manipulation. People are absolutely sick of being told what to do, of being exploited through their own sense of morality - through actually being a good person - into bowing to the whims of some screeching college age SJW. It's gotten to the point that words like racist, sexist, homophobe, have been thrown around so much they've lost of the power and meaning they once had. People are getting to the point of when someone calls them racist, their response is now just, "well if that makes me a racist then so be it". These people don't actually genuinely care about sexism of civil rights or the new craze of "respecting pronouns" and advocating for transgender rights. They don't give a shit. They exploit and use those things (which actual good people DO care about) as a tool to gain political control over other people. It satisfies them. I mean nobody (sane) actually thinks it's sexist to sit with your legs apart on a bus or train ("man spreading"), they just say it is and accuse people of being sexist because it gives them great satisfaction to control someone else's behaviour. This is just a very minor example, they also try to control how others dress, how they think and form opinions, how they celebrate holidays, how they talk, what they are and aren't allowed to say, who they vote for. These people actually WANT you to feel guilty about being white, or male, or middle class, or straight, etc, because it benefits them. Some cherry picked examples:



Girl has one of the most punchable faces I've ever seen.



The black girl is nothing more than a bully. She doesn't care about 'cultural appropriation', she just levels that accusation towards people in order to control and dominate - bully them into submission. All she wants to do is make someone do what she wants. She KNOWS she's being a bully, and she KNOWS what she's doing is wrong, and shameful - this is the reason she attacks the cameraman. Because it's proof of her disgusting behaviour.

"What you're doing offends me. Therefore you must stop doing it. If you don't then you're a bad immoral person". < The best solution towards this sort of entitlement is to simply not care. I'm offending you? So what? The only reason these people have any influence is because (mostly white) people DO care about not causing offense. They are good people already, and they're just being cynically exploited because of it.

Getting back to this thread, the crazy thing is that I bet those girls who were getting rated 9/10 or 10/10, or in some way learned that the males thought they were physically attractive ABSOLUTELY LOVED IT. But only if they find the guy attractive. There seems this double standard between what a guy who they find unattractive says about them, and what someone attractive says. An ugly male says she's "hot, nice legs, big tits, 9/10" is an objectifying sexist creep. Whereas a male who they find attractive says the exact same thing is "confident, 'knows what they want', assertive, alpha, hot".

This is a very silly argument because light passes through glass just as it does through air or water. You say instead that there is an images projected on the surface of the glass. But our eye is not in physical contact with that surface, — John

Our eye is not in 'physical contact' with ulexite either, and yet there's an image displayed on the surface. In the youtube video above, the light travels from the card, through the ulexite, and then from the surface of the ulexite/TV rock through the air and is directed onto your retina by the lens of your eye. Some unexplained thing happens here and then we perceive the image of the playing card/toucan on the surface of the ulexite out in the world.

So, if it happens in the case of ulexite, why is it so "silly" to suggest the same process happens in the case of glass?

I highly suspect that the people in this thread who are acting incredulous are just so utterly fooled by the illusion - having misinterpreted their perception of clear objects their entire lives - that the mere suggestion that one of their fundamental beliefs about the world (a lot of things are clear) may be wrong is too difficult to comprehend. They are stuck in their dogmatic ways, unwilling (or even worse, unable) to consider any other interpretation but their own, and lash out at anyone who suggests an alternative. A sort of defensive attack.

The crazy things is that everyone acting like I'm some sort of idiotic moron are in fact the ones not interpreting clear things incorrectly. *They're* the ones being fooled by the illusion and quite frankly the people taking this attitude towards this idea are just embarrassing themselves, at least in my eyes. It's kind of like a young earth creationist calling someone who believes in evolution a silly idiot because creationism is just SO obviously correct, I mean like how could you even be so dumb to consider an alternative?

I've yet to see anyone actually present a cohesive alternative to this theory. Spouting derision is not actually an argument!

Can anyone who doesn't believe in this theory please articulate their understanding of clear things?



Can this image *really* be explained by just saying "it's refraction"? For me, that's not a good enough explanation.

A magnified image displayed on the surface. You don't look 'through' a magnifying glass.



Large image displayed on surface of rock pool. You are not seeing 'into' the water.



Only the head of the koi out of water is being seen. The rest of the koi is an image on the surface of the pond.



One of the finest examples of this sort of illusion. Images of the world beyond on the surface of the windows, and the actual world beyond seen through the middle.



Mirrors function using the same sort of illusion, but instead display an image on their surface of the world in front of them rather than the world beyond. The idea that when you look at a mirror it's like a portal for your gaze and shoots it back at the world behind you is clearly absurd.



Another example of the mirror illusion, what you are seeing is an image of the world/above in front (rather than below the surface) displayed on the surface of the puddle. Note how the ripples on the surface distort the image.



Refracted half of man is an image displayed on the surface of the glass.



The classic. Only the top part of the pencil above the lip of the glass is what's being seen. Everything below is an image displayed on the outer surface of the cup.



Still think the glass is 'see-through'? If you're looking through the glass at the spoon within, why is the spoon separated and facing the wrong way?

Would you say ulexite is 'see-through'?



Are you looking 'through' the rock at the page behind? Or at an image on the surface?





Are you looking through the ulexite at the paper behind, or at an image on the surface?



Are you looking through the ulexite at the pencil behind, or at an image on the surface of the rock?



Notice how the lines don't match up perfectly. Same sort of thing is taking place when you wind down your drivers side window half way, and notice that your wing mirror seen through the open window doesn't perfectly line up the lower half of the wing mirror seen 'through' the window.


'See-through'? Or an image on the surface?


As the image on the surface becomes clearer, the illusion that the rock is 'see-through' improves. Glass displays a very clear image, and so the resulting illusion is quite compelling. Nearly everyone falls for it.

This strikes me as the same sort of argument as "because we experience reflections, something must exist which is being reflected". I would say the mistake you are making in this argument is that there are anti realist ways of understanding the existence of unobservable variables, and 'things which are being reflected'. Your argument strikes me as somewhat question begging in that it only works if you already assume a realist understanding of unobserved things. Just take a cup for example, I don't think you'll find many antirealists who think that only the surface facing them exists, because that is the only part which is visually perceived. As in the cup is merely an outer half of a curved cylinder, and has no back. The anti realist still takes the cup to be a whole object, he just analyses the meaning of "whole object" in an experiential way, in opposition to the realist who thinks the back of the cup not perceived still exists because say there's atoms there or something.

I forget who said this but some phenomenologist wrote this idea that when one sees an object, although in terms of visual perception all one sees is a surface facing oneself, in a more mental sense one builds the three dimensionality of the object within ones mind by imagining the object as being seen from all directions, a gods eye view.

I don't think an antirealist would just outright deny the existence of unobserved variables, he'd just analyse the way in which they exist as being experiential.

All experiences seem to have this thing in common which is this sense of subjectivity, or 'being experienced by me', 'my sensations', 'first person character'. We can call this "pre-reflective subjectivity". The "pre-reflective" part means that it comes before any higher order thoughts or ideas of 'this is my experience', 'I am having this experience'. It's a subjectivity which comes before any sort of thoughts about subjectivity.

Just as all experiences have an intentional aspect, and a temporal aspect, I believe they all have this aspect of pre-reflective subjectivity - a felt quality of 'mineness'.

In the past I considered this theory that there is nothing to 'ourselves' over and above this felt quality of mine ness. What do I mean? Well, because conscious experience is ongoing, what we experience is an ongoing pre-reflective sense of subjectivity. This is because built into all different types of conscious experience is that pre-reflective quality. So what I mean is that there is no self independent if conscious experience, nothing is actually having or undergoing your conscious experience. All that's happening is there's an ongoing felt quality of 'mineness', which because it is all pervasive makes us feel as though that experiential quality is actually something far more fundamental than it is.

So we can think of conscious experience as being sort of free floating ontologically 'un-owned' things. We might say that experiences experience themselves. So let's take the example of pain. Imagine the experience of pain, but lacking the felt quality of 'my pain, 'a subjects pain', 'I am being pained'. So we drop that aspect of the pain experience, what remains. Something like the pure sensation of pain which exists without an owner or subject, it's just sort of there in existence experiencing itself.

So the idea here is that all conscious experience is fundamentally ownerless. Nobody or thing has or undergoes the experience. The experience just exists by itself through brute force. The only reason we think there is a subject/haver of all these experiences, is because what is actually a contingent part/aspect of the conscious experience itself (pre-reflective subjectivity), is built into the nature of all experiences. So, experience exists ownerless, and by brute force, they're sort of just in existence experiencing themselves. But part of how all experience exists is with this aspect of mineness. Because conscious experience is ongoing - so they exist by brute force in an ongoing present process - and all have as part of their nature a felt quality of mineness, there exists this pervasive illusion of mineness, of subjectivity. We have this higher order thought experience (post reflective) that there must exists a haver or feeler of conscious experience.

So all that exists is an ownerless experience, it just sort of exists there by itself and through its own force, experiencing itself, the experience qualia sensations feelings just sort of exist. But all aspects of this ownerless experience have as part of their make up an experiential quality of 'mine ness'. This causes higher order reflective thoughts to form about a pre existent/before subject or haver of experience, a self or actual subjectivity. But it's just an ongoing illusion. The ownerless experience is just sort of tricking itself through its pervasive felt quality of 'mine ness' into forming higher order thoughts about something having or feeling the experience.

Do you see what I'm saying? This pre-reflective mineness is a contingent part of the experience. It could be stripped away and what would exist would be a pure experience which didn't feel owned or had.

So what I am saying is there is no actual self. All that actually exists is unowned experience, which is what we are. All we exist as is this unowned conscious experience. But because all aspects of what we are - which is un owned brute existing experience - contains a felt quality of mineness, there exists an illusion both pre and post reflective (ones the all pervasive quality of mineness, the other are the reflective higher order thoughts about being a self and a subject having or feeling the experience) that something has or undergoes the experience, when in actuality the experience is there just existing by, and experiencing, itself.

Hope I'm being clear. Any thoughts?

One problem which strikes me is if this is true, how do we account for the unified nature of conscious experience, what combines all the various sensations into a sort of cohesive whole. And so there's no me and no you really, do we just say there's a cluster of brute fact existing experiences over here, and another over there?

Seems like any theory of a self has insurmountable problems. Whether it's an illusion, or it exists in x, y, or z way, it's extreme difficult to make sense of it.

dukkha I think you asked the same thoughtless question back on th — jamalrob

Stopped reading lol

I know what those words mean from a practical point of view, but from that viewpoint, other than the effects of refraction, there is no difference between what is seen through glass and what is seen without the glass there. — andrewk

There's tonnes more! Think of magnifying glasses, glasses you wear, curved glass, coloured glass, the reflections which are seen in glass, the wobble of rocks below the surface, telescopes, cracked mirrors split the world, warped mirror galleries, infinity mirrors, the list goes on.

You appear to be trying to make some sort of metaphysical distinction and I can't see that the distinction boils down to anything more than word choice. — andrewk

I don't know how to make it much clearer. Surely you don't think that when you look in a mirror, you are *literally* seeing your own face, as if the mirror magically turns the direction of your gaze back towards you?

I give up lol.

Have you been consuming mind-altering substances lately? — John

Yawn..

Actually, I'd say that the part I put in italics is wrong unless there's some reason to believe that what we're receiving on the TV screen isn't accurate. — Terrapin Station

Either your making an argument about word use (what's seen in the television screen is in sense an image OF the outside world), or you're talking in absurdities. An image displayed on the pixels of a TV screen, does not contain the literal objects on the other side of the wall! A representation/image is not the very same thing as what's being represented.

The OP looks to me like a reboot of the old 'indirect realism' argument, but just using different words.

If you want to think you are seeing the object, then think that. If you want to think you are seeing a representation of the object, then think that instead. The difference between the two is nothing but word choice. — andrewk

No, that's not what I'm arguing. Look at the nearest pane of glass. This thread is about whether what's seen 'through' the glass are the very same objects that would be seen if the pane was removed.

It's about the extent of your field. Does it extend beyond the pane and terminate at the surfaces of the things in the world beyond the glass, in the same way it would if there was no pane of glass. Or, does it terminate on the surface of the glass?

Imagine a windowless room. Somebody comes along and mounts a high-def TV screen on the wall disguised as a windows (with a frame etc). On the other side of the wall is a little webcam which sends data to the TV of the world outside. The high def TV disguised as a window displays this data as an moving live image of the world outside the windowless wall. Someone enters the windowless room, looks at the image on displayed on the disguised (as a window) TV screen and thinks he's looking out a window at the world beyond the (windowless) room. He fell for the illusion. The depth of his visual field ends at the TV screen, he's not actually looking at the world beyond the windowless room. If someone came along with a chainsaw and cut a square hole in the wall of the windowless room, then you could look through the hole at the world beyond the room. The depth of your visual field would extend out beyond the hole into the world beyond the room and terminate at the surface of the objects you were looking at. When the man looked at the TV screen he could only see as far as the TV screen on the inside of the wall. Now when he looks through the chainsaw cut hole he can see a lot further than before, out at the world beyond the hole - he is actually looking at the world outside the room. Whereas before, although he thought he was looking out at the world beyond the wall when he looked at the crisp moving image on the disguised TV screen - he was falling for an illusion. He could only see as far as the image on the TV screen. He was mistaken in thinking he was looking *through* a window at the world outside the (windowless) room.

Now, when a glazier comes along and fits a pane of glass (which is a solid object) into the square hole cut into the wall by a chainsaw, what happens? Does the man in the room see the world beyond the pane of glass, in much the same way as when it was just an empty hole in the wall. Is he looking at the very same objects which exist outside the hole in the wall, glass pane or no glass pane fitted? Or, when the window pane is fitted into the chainsaw cut hole, is the pane for the man in the room much like the disguised TV screen which once occupied the same place as the new window? When he looked at the TV, although he thought he was looking *through* a window at the world beyond the (actually windowless) room, he was mistaken, he was falling for an illusion. Is it much the same case when the pane of glass is fitted into the chainsaw cut hole? Whereby he *thinks* he's looking *through* the pane of glass at the world beyond the room, in much the same way and at the very same things that he was looking at when he was just looking through the empty chainsaw cut hole in the side of the wall, but in actuality, much like the TV screen which presented an image of the world outside the wall that he *mis-took* for the actual world beyond the wall (he didn't realize he was looking at an *image* of the world beyond the room) he is again falling for an illusion, mistaking an image on the inner surface of the pane of glass (much like the image on the disguised TV screen) for being the actual world beyond the room.

Is glass actually 'see-through'? You can see through the chainsaw cut hole in the wall at the world outside, is it the very same things you are looking at when the pane of glass is fitted into the hole? Although a solid object has now plugged the hole in the wall, does the extent or depth of you visual field (the distance between your eye and the the thing it's looking at) go *through* the solid object (glass) and extend out into the world beyond the wall and terminate at the surface of the objects out there (which WAS happening when the hole was just empty, when you were just looking through the empty hole in the wall cut by the chainsaw)?

Do we see an image on the glass of the world behind it, or does our visual field penetrate through the solid object and we see the actual things existing beyond the pane of glass, the same objects which we would see, and the same extent of our visual field as would be, when there was no pane of glass fitted and we were looking through an empty hole in the side of the wall?

It LOOKS as if we seeing ***through*** the pane of glass, we THINK we are seeing the world beyond the pane (the same things which would be seen if not pane was fitted), we INTERPRET what we are seeing when we see a window as being the world beyond that window, as if the glass were 'see-through'. BUT, and this is the entire point of this thread; what we are ACTUALLY seeing when we look at glass is an image on the surface of the pane. And this is analogous to seeing an image of the world beyond a wall on a TV screen. That most of us (not me) are falling for this illusion (they are making the wrong interpretation of what they are seeing, they think they are seeing the world beyond), does not mean that it's not an illusion.

What's the point of this theory? Why reason do I have to be saying this?

Because, when we look (supposedly) through glass, and if we remove the glass and then look through the hole in the wall, WHAT WE SEE DOES NOT LOOK EXACTLY THE SAME. If we are looking at the very same objects, why do they look different? Again, look 'out' your windscreen at the road/world beyond the car, and then stick your head out the side window and look at the road,and then go back and forwards. Why does the road not look exactly the same? If you removed the windscreen and did the same thing, the road WOULD look exactly the same (because you actually would be looking at the same road). When the windscreen is fitted, and you are SUPPOSEDLY seeing the very same objects you were seeing when there was no windscreen, WHY DO THEY LOOK DIFFERENT?

When you look at the rocks at the bottom of a lake, why do they wobble and warp around? They are not wobbling or warping, if you drained the lake they'd be still and stable. If it is the very same rocks you are looking at, why does it bend and warp and wobble when they're submerged under the water, and yet appear still and stable when the lake is drained? How do we explain this? We don't want to say that the rock is literally melting and wobbling and warping around, as if water somehow drastically changed the nature of the rock, rather, we want to say that the rock under the water has the same still and stable properties as when it is not underwater. We THEREFORE have to say that although the rock *appears* to be wobbling and dancing around on the bottom of the lake, it is not. It is actually not warping, and it is still at the bottom of the lake. It is an illusion, it just looks that way.

How does this illusion work? If (a big "if"), it is the very same rock which we are looking at both submerged under the lake and when the lake is drained, if in both cases we are looking at the same thing, why does it wobble and warp in one case, and not in the other? How can we be looking at a solid non dancing around non warping object, and yet it appears that way? What is the mechanism by which an object can appear one way, and yet in reality be a completely different way AND YET IN BOTH CASES YOU ARE SEEING THE VERY SAME OBJECT. You can't have it both ways, you can't be seeing how something merely appears (to be warping, moving, dancing around, a different colour) and yet also be literally seeing the actual rock.

You have two completely different things, a warping, dancing rock, jiggling around to the sway of the water. And a solid stable rock which when the lake is drained is not. How are you, in both cases seeing the very same object?

How cab you be seeing a bent stick that's not bent? When you look at the bend/kink (and warp), how are you are actually seeing a straight stick. When you see the kink, you are actually see a straight stick, and yet it's the vary same object you are looking at. It clearly looks kinked, and yet it's actually straight, and when you look at the kink, you're seeing a straight stick. How can this be? How can an object clearly look kinked, warped and disjointed, and then look solid and straight, and in both cases it be the very same object? And for some reason how it appears when not underwater is in actuality how it is. And not the other way round. Why is the stick not in actuality a warping dancing disjointed stick that merely appears straight when not submerged?

How can you have appearance, and reality, and yet in both cases be seeing reality?

Things look bigger in a magnifying glass. But they are not actually bigger. How can you be seeing something which clearly looks bigger and yet it's still the same size, and in yet both cases it's the very same object being seen? How can it be bigger, and the same size, at the same time.

You might say it merely *appears* bigger/closer, and I'd agree. But I'd say you are seeing a mere appearance, an image on the surface of the magnifying glass. Whereas you'd say you're looking *through* the magnifying glass at an object which appears bigger/closer than how it really is and yet this is not really a mere appearance because it's still the same object that you are seeing magnifying glass or not. It appears bigger/closer, when in reality it's not, but yet you're still looking through the magnifying glass at the reality. How can the very same objects be both bigger and closer, and at the same time the same size and further away, and yet it's the same objects being seen, as if you are looking *through* the magnifying glass at the object beyond.

You want it both ways. You want to say you're seeing how something merely appears, and not how it actually is (eg "the rocks at the bottom of the lake are actually still, they just look like they're dancing around), and yet it's the very same object being perceived. How can a fish be in one place but really be another, AND YET YOU ARE STILL SEEING THE SAME FISH. You could stand on a wharf and point at a fish caught in a little trap below the surface. Then drain the lake, stand in the same place and point at the fish again. You're not pointing at the same spot, your arm is not pointing in the exact same direction. How can this be? How can you pointing directly at a fish underwater, but in reality you're pointing in the wrong direction because it's not in the place you're pointing to, and yet you're still pointing at the same fish. Either the direction/ location you are pointing to is wrong, or it's not. They can't both be right.

This is utterly confused and to me at least, just saying "refraction" is nowhere near a satisfactory explanation. My theory easily deals with this; when you point at the fish (supposedly) underwater, you are actually pointing at an image of a fish on the surface of the water (and most likely falling for the illusion of thinking you are literally seeing *through* the water at a fish below the surface). A fish can appear in one place and yet be in another, because you are not seeing the very same fish. There's a fish below the surface of the water swimming round, and there's an image seen on the surface of the water of a fish swimming around. It doesn't appear to be an image to most people (as in, they don't realize what they are seeing is an image, they think they are seeing *through* the water at the actual fish below the surface) but it is. People who think they are seeing an actual fish below the surface, as if the water is 'see-through', as if their visual field extends beyond the surface of the water and down into it extending to the fish and the bottom of the lake around the fish, are wrong. They are falling for an illusion. Water is not 'see-through', the extent of your visual field stops at the surface of the water, you are not seeing anything beyond the surface, the surface of the water displays an image of what is behind it.

How does it do this? In the same way a mirror does. Surely you don't believe a mirror shoots beach your visual field beyond you, as if it's the very same object being seen in the mirror, and when you turn your head around and look. You see an image in the mirror, which really does look like it has depth beyond the surface of the mirror, but it doesn't. The same thing happens with glass, it presents an image which appears to be actual depth beyond the surface of the glass, but it's just an image. That you mistake this image for the world beyond doesn't make it so. Likewise, that you mistake the face in the mirror for literally being your face as if you've ripped your eyes out and turned them around, does not make it so. Mirrors do not rebound your gaze and shoot it off in directions so that you can look at an object without actually facing it. Surely you can't believe this is so, at least on reflection. My theory is that glass without a silver backing (a window) does much the same thing. The mirror displays an image whats in front of it, the window displays an image of what's behind.

If you find this hard to believe then go look in a mirror and ask yourself if the face you see is the very same face you would see if you ripped your eyes out and turned them around. Does this actually make sense? Like if you can see in a direction that you aren't even facing, why can't you do feel? Why can't you stick your hand into the mirror and feel your own face? Sounds absurd, the mirror is a freaking solid object right? And besides, you can't reach with your hand one way and yet be feeling something in the opposite direction. Right?

Then why can you do it with vision? Why can you look straight ahead at a solid pane of glass, have your point of focus even further beyond the pain (like a stereogram) and yet be seeing the actual objects behind you? When you look at a mirror, you see a person which appears at a depth beyond the mirror, which is correlated with your bodies distance from the mirror. It looks as far behind as you are in front. My theory is that it's not correct to therefore interpret the body you are seeing in the mirror, as being the same literal thing that you inhabit. That makes no sense, to think that when you look in the mirror at 'your' hand, it is the literal same object as when you look downwards at your hand. This is wrong and if you think this then you are being fooled by an illusion. Because they are not the very same thing, one is your actual hand, the other is an image displayed in the mirror. An analogy would be when you go on Skype and look at yourself in the screen and wave about your hand, the hand that you see on the screen is an image displayed on the surface of the screen, whereas the hand you're waving around is your actual hand. Nobody (intelligent) thinks that the two hands are literally the same object, as if the computer screen shoots backwards the direction of your gaze. Why do they think that way when it comes to mirrors, and if they don't, if they realize that the mirror is merely displaying an image, then why is clear glass any different? A mirror is just clear glass with a reflective backing, all the backing changes is that the source of the light coming from the pane of glass to your eyes, comes from the objects in front of the reflective backing, whereas with glass with no reflective backing (windows) the source of the light is from behind the pane. If you agree that the mirror displays an image, then you must agree that so too does glass without reflective backing, there's literally no difference other than the direction the light came from before it travels from the surface of the glass to your eyes. With a mirror the light comes from the objects in front of it, hits the reflective back which turns the light waves around (so to speak) which then travel to your retina. If in this case you believe that what you are seeing is an image in the mirror (which you should), then you should also believe the same thing of clear glass, there's no fundamental difference between the two. Mirrors display an image of the world in front of them, glass (and all clear things) display an image of the world behind them. Once we realize it's an image then we can easily account for all the illusions associated with glass/clear things. You stick your arm in the water and it appears bent at the incorrect angle, and appears to be wobbling around even though you aren't moving it, and your hand appears visually to be in a slightly different location that the feeling in your hand. How to explain this? Should we screech "REFRACTION" and think anyone who disagrees with us is a retarded moron who needs an understanding of basic physical theory? Or should we recognise that the water is not 'see-through', we are merely seeing an image of a hand on the surface of the water - you're not looking at your actual hand below the water, and it appears to be wobbling around due to the way in which water alters the direction of light. I really shouldn't need to bring in theories of light and refraction and the "physical world" but it appears some people in this thread can't actually look at a pond without bringing in that theoretical backing. So it's going to looking something like:

Light is emitted from sun. It travels to the pond on earth. It penetrates through the surface of the pond and into the water, because water is physically transparent - lightwaves can travel through it. You've stuck your hand below the surface. The light which is travelling through the water reaches your hand below and is 'turned around' (your hand is not physically transparent (please can we just say it's turned around and not complicate this further with absorption of particular colours, - although this explains why things appear darker in water, or appear pink in lemonade, or the world looks blue when you look through the top tinted part of your car windscreen). The light which is turned around by your hand below the surface, travels back in a different way than it does through air (I believe it travels slower? Either way it doesn't matter). Depending on the surface angle of the water, is the direction the light travels outwards from the surface. That is, if there's a wave going through the water it spreads out or concentrates the direction of the light depending on whether the surface of the water is convex or convex (i.e. what part of the wave is above your hand). The light travels out into the world at those various angles. Your retina detects the light which is concentrated upon it by the lens of your eye (same sort of thing as the wave does with the light waves). The rods and cones in your retina respond to light entering these cells by emitting an 'neuronal pulse'. The neuronal pulse travels through a series of cells in the optic cord, and then through and across (from the eye the pulse came from) the brain into a part of the brain nearer the back called the visual cortex. [SCENE MISSING]*. You then experience the visual perception of seeing an image displayed on the surface of the pond which is an image of the rocks on the bottom, your hand below the surface, and possibly a fish. The image wobbles and moves around depending on the flatness of the surface it's displayed on. The image of your hand is darker than your actual hand, because a lower amount of light is reflected by your actual hand when it's underwater than when it's above. The image if your hand is displayed on the surface of the water, not in a location which is say there's a straight line from your hand under the water to your eye, the image is not displayed on the part of that straight line which the surface of the water touches. The water refracts the light. So we must imagine this line as being kinked at the surface of the water. The image on the surface of your hand shows a hand in a different spot that where your hand below the surface actually is. The image appears to have depth so when you look at the hand in the image, your point of focus is not at the surface but rather is below the surface (much like a stereogram). Nevertheless you don't literally see world behind the paper displaying the stereogram, likewise you don't see what is actually below the surface, it is an illusion. Falling for this illusion is when you mistake the image of the hand, as in you interpret/think that what you are seeing is not an image displayed on the surface (in the same way a stereogram is actually printed on the surface of paper), but is rather your actual hand below. Not falling for it means you are cool like me.

Ok, in this gigantic post I've tried to be excruciatingly clear, and painfully over-explain everything. If you still don't understand then I literally give up, I don't know how I can make the theory any clearer. If you do understand but don't agree and have an argument why, I'd be interested to hear.

*nobody in the world knows what happens here and how/why

I think it's a little (a lot) disengenious. The vast majority of suicides are by the severely mentally ill, the terminally ill, people who have experienced some great bereavement or another, unbearable shame, and those suffocating under crippling debt.

I really highly doubt it was a serious issue for Camus himself. Are we really supposed to believe that this man would have lethally inflicted harm upon himself for some vague, ephermal reason like the world having no objective meaning? I don't buy it.

What method was he going to use? When was he going to do it? How was he planning on mitigating the effects his death would have on his loved ones? Note or no note? Is it a mistake? Is there no other option? How will he find the courage to do it? For people whom suicide really is a serious issue, these are the kind of issues they grapple with. I don't get the impression Camus seriously considered any of them.

I mean even if his response to 'the absurd' was to think suicide IS the best option, it's still a gigantic leap from there to actually DOING the act. He was never going to actually kill himself - at least not as a response to 'the absurd'. His solution to this supposed issue was already a foregone conclusion before it was raised. There's no serious issue of suicide if you were never going to do it in the first place. It doesn't need to be argued against or even thought about at all.

"Should I kill myself because the world is absurd?" There's no point even asking this question because I'm not going to actually lethally harm myself even if the answer is yes. I suspect Camus was never going to either. It's a non-issue.

If you run your hand up your arm you continue to exist and feel the sensation all the way up. Why do we not just die right at the start?

That we don't die right now doesn't seem derived from our future or past phenomenology. I am stabbing my fingernail Into my forehead and wondering why the sensation of pain keeps persisting. It is continuing to hurt, therefore I am continuing to exist through the (or we might say, "as the") changing/ongoing sensation.

Rather the notion of there being the same person at another time is derivative of the phenomenology of the future. — The Great Whatever

Derivative of the phenomenology of of the past as well? I project backwards a past and think of myself as the same self now as was then. I think of my memories as being of my prior experiences.

But your experience is present, and it continues to be present. Pinch your arm twice, you felt it both times. Your experience is constantly changing and yet it's always present. You are continuing to exist. How? That conscious experience is ongoing is not derivative of the phenomenology of the future.

There's a more fundamental self/identity, which allows you to have any sensations at all in the first place.

In terms of how it usually manifests within the West, yes. Islam is the "The Other," a people with a history and culture considered outside anything worthwhile, something understood to be so savage that it ought to be wiped off the face of the Earth. I would go as far to say a lot of us think of Muslims as "savages" who we must enlighten. — TheWillowOfDarkness

Yes!



Cultural relativism is cancer. These people ARE savages.

My future self will be different than my present self in the sense that it will have had more experiences, it will have different memories and most likely different understandings about itself and the world, and so on. On the other hand it will be the same insofar as it must be the same in order for the very idea of it being my future self to make any sense at all. — John

We could separate the two into say the human sense of self - which is a sort of ego with an identity and a collection of memories, and gains knowledge and understandings of the world - from a more ontologically prior sense of "subjectivity/sameness" which (I believe) must exist in order for the human sense of self to come about.

So in order to have this human sense of self through time, one must already be the same 'subjectivity' which had the past experiences and which remembers them. Imagine a human which has no memories. If there's only this human sense of self, and it's derived from memories and the like -things which form the contents of conscious experience - then the human without memories etc would have no sense of self. And so if there's no more fundamental sense of sameness/subjectivity, how could this human begin to form memories? If there's no subjectivity persisting through time already in existence, how can it be the very same 'self' which has the prior experience which the human without any memory undergoes, and then remembers, in order to form it's first memory? There must be a more prior sene of ownership of experience than that *derived* from the contents of experience like human identity, memory, future anticipation, etc. It can't be derived from memories because it must already exist for the idea of memories (recollections of *prior* experience - there must already be the same subjectivity in order to have had a prior experience to form memories of) to be coherent.

If you are reborn in a different body and with no memory of your past ( that is, no memory of what is for you now, present) identity, would you say that it would be a case of a self or identity that has "migrated"? — John

It's really hard to talk about a future lifetime which has nothing to do with this life, while in this life. I'd say it would be the same 'being' which is experiencing this lifetime, with its human sense of ego, memories, etc, that would be experiencing the next lifetime. Because whatever it is, it is 'prior' to the experience of memory, human ego, projection into the future - personal identity (I don't mean this in the sense of "I am a male, I am x age, I have these political views", I mean in the sense of the same thing having/feeling the experience at T1 as feels T2) doesn't arise from, or is derived from those things, rather, identity must already be there for these things to all be known to or experienced by the same 'being'. In order for one to have an experience, and then remember that experience, identity through time must already be in place, it can't therefore be derived from those things.

It would be the same 'prior to ego, memory, human identity' being which undergoes this life as feels the next. Not sure whether "migrated" would be the right word. I would think in this sort of poetic language it would be the persisting through time 'being' which is stationary (doesn't migrate anywhere) while this lifetime experience ends and then the next one starts. That's just how I'd characterise it anyway.

I really can't think of the word to use here, 'being' makes it sound way too much like an object/thing. "Subjectivity" sounds better I'll start using that.

Oh, right, well there's a great opportunity for you there, D, you can start a movement explaining to Buddhists what the Buddha got wrong. — Wayfarer

He was just a human like you and me, not some infallible god. And I'm pretty sure people were already doing this - to the very Buddha himself - while he was alive. What makes the Buddha right about everything he said?

But then I'm back at, of course you'd be concerned, and that is a dumb question. Beings obviously are frightened of death and pain. What's your point? — Wayfarer

If we imagine ourselves as just say, a collection of biological and physical processes (I don't actually believe this). The collection of processes at Time 2 is different than the collection at Time 1 (or we might say "the state of the processes at T1, or even, "the arrangement of matter at T1"), point is it's not the same at all. So from the perspective of you being at Time 1 why are you worrying about what the conscious experience will be at Time 2, because it will be an entirely different arrangement of matter, or state of processes, or etc. What is persisting through all these dynamic biological and physical processes such that whatever feels the experience at T1 feels the experience at T2?

Or even if we forget materialism and just talk about phenomenology. Conscious experience is in a constant process of change. The conscious experience at T2 is entirely different than that at T1. But, with conscious experience in a constant state of change, how is it that the same thing which dreads the torture is the same thing which feels the torture? How do you feel/have both experiences if there is NOT something which persists through the constant change of conscious experience? How are both experiences undergone or known to you, if you didn't persist from T1 to T2?

The Buddha teaches that there is 'no self that migrates from life to life'. But nevertheless beings are reborn according to their karma! — Wayfarer

Pretty sure Mr. Sid was just utterly confused on this point. There must be personal identity through time if you come back into existence again reincarnated. Something must be racking up the karma. It just doesn't make sense it's like someone saying, "nothing persists through time, there's nothing which is having this experience, no soul exists which is racking up karma but... my next lifetime is going to be as a person in a lower caste because I was bad throughout my life".

I think there are Hindu strands of 'dharma' which do believe in a soul, which makes far more sense if you believe in samsara. I really can't make sense of nothing existing and yet it comes back in the next lifetime.

Explain why it makes sense for someone who knows he will soon be tortured - but isn't being tortured yet - to fear the impending event. — csalisbury

Because it would appear that there is personal identity over time. The very same 'thing' (I don't really know what word to use here, self? subjectivity?) which is having this current experience is the same thing which will experience the pain of torture in the future.

I recently broke my hand and had to get it reset. I was sitting on the hospital bed (huffing nitrous thank god) dreading the pain I was about to experience. Why? Isn't that a problem for the person in the future, isn't that something which the 'future me' will have to deal with? Why should I be concerned?

Because it is the same 'subjectivity' (?) which persists through the changing experience (persists through time). The 'thing' which is having the experience of dreading one person grabbing my elbow and the other grabbing my fingers and them both pulling extremely hard in opposite directions while the doctor smushes my hand bone back into alignment in the future, is the very same thing which undergoes that experience in the future. Whatever 'it' (scare quotes because "it" kind of makes it sound like it's an object in the world) is, it persists through the changing present experience.

Right?

It's like if we swapped experiences/lives. Even though the experience would have the same content if I were having it or you were having it, it would be an entirely different 'subjectivity' which is having the experience. That is, our experiences are not these free existing things which nothing has or owns. Some sort of 'thing' has or undergoes the experience.

It has to, right? Because it hurt like a itch! If there wasn't something which persists through the changing experience (a 'haver' of the experience we might say) then how is it that 'I' felt both the dreading experience and the pain experience? Easiest way to account for this is to just posit a 'subject' of experience, a being which exists in some sense that felt both. It's hard to talk about whatever it is without making it seem like I think there is some sort of separate object which has the experience.

I think there is this access issue, which is why I am having some much trouble thinking about or describing this 'thing', and that's that you wouldn't be able to find it within your conscious experience (because if you did, the thing would be the thing which has found the thing, ha). As in you can't consciously experience it (and therefore have some empirical idea of what it is) because it would be the thing which is having the conscious experience, and therefore not what is being consciously experienced. It can't be found within or accessed with conscious experience. Kind of like how an arrow can't shoot at itself.

Why don't we just bite the bullet and start believing in souls, is it really that absurd?

Do you still worry for the child you're looking at now or only for the future child who will be tortured. — csalisbury

The former, because personal identity through time does not depend on memories of the past or projections into the future. It doesn't matter the *content* of your conscious experience (eg, memory, projections into the future), because the thing which persists through time is outside of the contents of the conscious experience - it is what is experiencing the content. Sometimes I imagine animals like this (not claiming they are) - as having no experience of memory nor projection of themselves into the future. However even in this case I feel it would still be the same 'being' which has the experience at T1 as has the experience at T2.