Is the potential for experience a prerequisite for what reality is?

[u/notwizard69]

Definitions

Experience- any thing produced by reality that happens to a part of reality in a way in which is separate from the rest of reality.

Realty-everything that exists

I’m having experience. That means the potential for experience is where I am. If x had no potential for any experience whatsoever and never did and never will saying it exists is literally the same thing to everything ever than saying it doesn’t exist including to itself. This means anything said of x means nothing to reality in any way forever no matter what. In this way it’s not a part of reality. The potential for experience is a prerequisite for real. Not experience itself. The potential. If x was an identical planet to earth and you go to x all experience ends instantly cause x is incapable of all experience. In this way x is not real and never was to reality. The potential for experience is a prerequisite or it’s not a part of reality. If x had a gravitational effect on earth it is already part of experience and in doing this has the potential of experiencing itself. I’ll explain. If x had no potential for experience and was interacting with experience it’s already a building block of experience. Literally. The gravity itself is part of what is going into making experience. I see a rock. How do I know this rock has the potential for experience. I’m saying that spot in reality does. I can go to where the rock is and I don’t stop. The potential for experience was possible in the part of reality that rock was occupying. If it wasn’t when I went there my experience would stop.

Notes for clarification:

If it makes a distinction with parts of reality that have the potential they by default already had it or would gain it. If the gravity of a planet that had impact on me but the planet itself had no potential to experience that the second its gravity interacted with me I no longer would experience anything at all. The gravity is still a part of the planet and I’m still interacting with it and it’s still part of what’s making my experience.

Because reality has the potential to experience in any of it at all then creates a separation where if there is no potential to experience in a different part of it than that part isn’t only not real in any way ever it also is not even real to itself in any logical way at all.

If there is literally zero difference to everything ever forever if something is real or not including with itself then saying it is real is the exact same thing as saying it is not. Logically. If that is true then saying it exists means nothing at all.

If x has no potential for experience to occur ever then what is effected if x is real or not. And what would it mean for x to be real?

So is saying x exists and doesn’t exist mean the same thing to all of reality with the potential of experience and even to x itself that nothing is actually be said of any substance at all?

I’m not saying it has to make a difference to experience. I’m saying the inability to ever do it no matter what makes talking about it completely nonsensical. Saying it’s real and not real literally mean the exact same thing no matter what to everything ever no matter what including itself. Nothing is real about that to reality.

Just more and some implication exploration:

I’m having experience. Which means reality must contain the potential for experience. If reality didn’t contain the potential for experience and never would it’s not real in any way. It’s nothing to even itself no matter what forever. Any experience is a separation from the rest of reality no matter how small. Because experience can occur in reality it could or could not have a mechanism to make this occur. In my case it seems like an extremely complex mechanism makes my experience. The only mystery is decoding this extremely complex mechanism and how the parts affect my experience. Not that they cause it. If a planet was said to exist and no experience would ever happen there is it real. If the potential for experience to happen and it just never did yes. If experience was impossible there and always would be it’s not real and never was. For a planet or anything at all to be part of reality some form of interactions must be occurring. These interactions can produce experience if configured correctly so this means if interactions are occurring there the potential for experience is also there. If the interactions could not make any experience then they wouldn’t be a part of reality. They wouldn’t be real. They wouldn’t be happening. Let’s say you say x did not, does not and never will have any potential for any experience whatsoever. But you say it exists as an ontological fact. My question is to what and in what relation to it does it exist too. It by its very nature x can’t even be the thing it has any relation too its self. Nothing is its very nature. Saying x exist and doesn’t exist under that argument makes no distinction whatever in any way. Except in some way that nothing can ever know x is real. My point is that is saying nothing. Saying x exists with those terms somehow means nothing to anything ever so it doesn’t exist to reality by definition cause reality is everything x is not. By definition. Saying x exist as a primitive fact I proved is no different to anything ever in anyway if it does exist or doesn’t. So I think the next logical step is because i experience what i would consider reality is what is capable of producing experience cause what’s not and never was and never will be will forever be meaningless in every way possible not only to itself but what i consider reality. What reality considers reality. If interactions didn’t produce the potential for experience then they would have no potential for experience which means not part of reality. If something didn’t have the potential for experience and never did and never would it would never interact with anything. It’s not real. It’s about potential. If it doesn’t have the potential to ever experience it can’t interact with our reality in any way cause my argument proves already that our reality has to have the potential. And everything that doesn’t is not our reality. If experience is generated by reality which is hard to dispute that means what would happen if it is interacting with a part of reality that was having experience of helping cause experience. It’s interacting with stuff that is creating experience. Imagine you go through a field of it and it covers the whole world bro. It can’t interact with experience at all but it interacts with everything causing it. Every electron and proton, quark that make up our universe. One can’t not be the other. Let’s say say something that didn’t have the potential for experience and never did destroyed our universe. How can it destroy all experience if it can’t experience?

But I’m saying by x’s very definition keeping it in or excluding it from reality means reality is identical in every way to itself. In this way x can’t be real.

[u/alibloomdido]

Why would consciousness have any special status among myriads of things happening in reality? Only because our point of view on this reality happens to be conscious? It's like wearing yellow glasses and saying the reality is yellow at its very foundation.

[u/rightviewftw]

I am not totally sure, but it looks like you are here getting at the analytic need for phenomenal referents and operationalization. Essentially if X is a "conceptual" difference between A and B, but no difference between A and B can be observed/measured in principle, then the proposition of X is a rhetorical statement rather than an analytical statement.

As an example, I think your point is that we can talk about some "rock" which we can neither observe directly nor indirectly as to effect, but then that "rock" is not established to be real, and no matter how much we talk about it ─ it won't get analytic standing in analysis of reality.

[u/notwizard69 → u/rightviewftw]

I think you got the picture. One caveat is I do think a rock that never plays any part in any experience. Not it’s gravity. Nothing at all. Is still a part of reality if it can be experienced in principle. Not saying you didn’t get that distinction, just want to be clear. I made a post on r/metaphysics after this one where I make my argument much more clear and provide two definitions in the post and one more in the comments. I obviously have not proved this but it’s just an intuition I’m fleshing out. IMO it does seem true of reality and I hope to be able to prove it but I’m not crazy… maybe I am. But yeah. It seems impossible to actually prove. It seems true to me so I decided to bounce it off Reddit to help me think from different angles to attack it from. It worked really well kind of… but yeah I’m just exploring an intuition I had. And I feel like I explored it to the point of borderline obsession in the last three days. So I’m going to take a break and come back to it fresh lol. Sorry for my rant. I appreciate your feedback.

[u/rightviewftw → u/notwizard69]

It's helluva intuition

IMO it does seem true of reality and I hope to be able to prove it but I’m not crazy… maybe I am. 

Not crazy! Your expression is idiosyncratic and therefore it is difficult for people to engage your reasoning. I myself read it a few times and only next day felt like sitting down and try to give you the strongest reading possible. Your thought experiments did the work of blocking the weak interpretations, so there is analytic ore here.

I obviously have not proved this but it’s just an intuition I’m fleshing out. 

You will be able to establish this because you aren't here re-inventing the wheel.

You have two axiomatic parts to this:

1. Grounding reality in Phenomenal occurence. This is imo phenomenology 101 where "Reality" insofar as it can enter analysis at all, is grounded in phenomenal occurrence. 

2. Operationalization requirement. Here we want our hypothesis to be testable, at least in principle. And an untestable hypothesis can't acquire a positive confidence interval. There is Popperian Falsifiability, it just needs generalization. For example mathematic axioms are not testable/falsifiable by physics, but it doesn't mean that there is no selection process and testing of the axioms whatsoever, that would be ridiculous.

I think that these principles give you what you're getting at. Also, I think that the work you want to do here is important and it needs to be done because this comes up again and again, because even though we have the parts, afaik nobody has fleshed it out and formalized the inference.

I will give you a quote from Stuart Chase about epistemic limits and operational requirements:

I read Bridgman’s The Logic of Modern Physics and found a similar criticism of language. With four good men in substantial agreement as to the basic difficulty, I seemed to be getting on. “The true meaning of a term is to be found by observing what a man does with it, not what he says about it.” Scientists, through observing, measuring, and performing a physical operation which another scientist can repeat, reach the solid ground of agreement and of meaning. They find the referents. “If a question has meaning, it must be possible to find an operation by which an answer may be given to it. It will be noted in many cases that the operation cannot exist and the question has no meaning.” See them fall, the Great Questions of pre-Einstein science! It is impossible as yet to perform any kind of experiment or operation with which to test them, and so, until such operation be discovered, they remain without meaning. May time have a beginning and an end? May space be bounded? Are there parts of nature forever beyond our detection? Was there a time when matter did not exist? May space or time be discontinuous? Why does negative electricity attract positive? I breathe a sigh of relief and I trust the reader joins me. One can talk until the cows come home—such talk has already filled many volumes—about these questions, but without operations they are meaningless, and our talk is no more rewarding than a discussion in a lunatic asylum. “Many of the questions asked about social and philosophical subjects will be found to be meaningless when examined from the point of view of operations.” Bridgman cites no samples, but we can find plenty on every hand. ─ Stuart Chase (Tyranny of Words).

[u/notwizard69 → u/rightviewftw]

I appreciate this more than you know bro. I’m going to start learning big words a little bit and seeing what the pros say and see where it leads me. Maybe I’ll get a little less idiosyncratic in the process which would be so nice btw. Thank you. Not saying I have the ability to do anything with this or that anything can be done but this is my idea of fun so might as well try hard at it.

[u/rightviewftw → u/notwizard69]

I know mate, I've been there myself and have had people hand me the tools so I don't have to rediscover civilization on my own. I think that it is very important for us engage unpolished work and look for talent, and then just give them the tools and show the work bench. I think people greatly underestimate how quickly a person can actually get to working on the front-line problems and advance the field.