Michael Mitchell: Archive

We differentiate reality from imagination, not consciousness, nor anything beyond space and time, or existence, as such.

I have a blue blanket. I can imagine it's a brown blanket. The blue blanket is real. The brown blanket is not real. That's reality. I don't have to accept it, though. I can deny it in my mind. I can wish my blue blanket was brown, that the blanket could be any color I can imagine, and I can even change its color in reality or just create one, but my ability to imagine the blue blanket is brown does not have the power to change my blanket from blue to brown.

Most everyone understands this, especially regarding perceptual-level entities or objects. The problem of consciousness or how we know reality is what's the fucking difference between a mental image of a blue blanket which corresponds to reality and a brown blanket which doesn't? And if there's no difference, then whichever comes first, consciousness or existence, imagination or reality, is inconsequential and therefore merely a matter of arbitrary (requiring no justification) personal preference.

See? Explaining consciousness scientifically (or mystically) isn't the actual problem. The problem is philosophical. That MENTAL IMAGE CANNOT BE PERCEIVED by any mind other than the mind which creates it. No one will ever discover or create the means to prove to anyone else that consciousness creates reality or that reality creates consciousness or that only reality exists and consciousness must conform to it by distinguishing between reality and imagination or whatever. We can seek the solution to this problem from each other, but only an individual mind can actually solve it.

Intentionally or not, science is "explaining" consciousness out of existence, the results of which are no different than when philosophers tell us consciousness is an illusion or when religion tells us God is omniscient. It's always the lack of external evidence our minds (😂) are expected to find the most compelling.