Tuesday, March 05, 2019

Skepticism about theories that invoke illusion to dismiss anomalies

There are a lot of views out there that require you to say that certain aspects of our experience are illusions. For example, on a B theory of time, the passing of time is an illusion. Or, on the emergent property view of the mind, the sense we have of acting on volition is an illusion.

It seems to me that any theory or model that has to resort to illusion is an inadequate or incomplete model or theory. Ideally, a model or theory should account for all the information you have. It would be consistent with all of your information and either explain it or be explained by it. When you say that some aspects of our experience is an illusion, what you're essentially doing is admitting that that piece of information doesn't fit neatly into your model, and rather than give up your model or try to come up with a different one, you're just dismissing some of the evidence or information. You're sweeping it under the rug.

On the other hand there is such a thing as an illusion. I'm not saying we're never justified in dismissing something as an illusion. But in general when it comes to theories or models of reality, if illusion is a persistent or intrinsic part of that theory or model, then we should be skeptical of it because basically it means we have a piece of information that the theory or model doesn't account for.

2 comments:

scbrownlhrm said...

Well.... when it is, finally, Non-Theism’s conclusion that the illusion is *i*am* then the rational mind simply rejects said reductio.

scbrownlhrm said...

:-}

https://twitter.com/m_christianity/status/1111375478823088128?s=12