Real Experiences Of An Unreal World

Genesis, PART TWO, V.

This posts says nothing new but is an attempt to clarify a familiar issue.

The Sun shines on a garden. A man's eyes intercept a small part of the light reflected from trees, flowers and grass. Impulses transmitted from his eyes to his brain cause the latter organ to generate his visual perceptions of Sun, sky and garden. Because chlorophyll reflects a particular wavelength of electromagnetic radiation, he sees trees and leaves as green. Through long familiarity with a coherent external environment, he unreflectingly differentiates this green from the blue of the sky, the brown of the tree trunks and the hue of his own skin. While seeing trees etc, he also remembers and thinks about many other things. Consider the man's total experience through a finite period of time: all his bodily sensations, visual perceptions, auditory and other sensory experiences, memories, imaginings and thoughts.

Is it theoretically possible to construct an artifact that would internally duplicate that total experience? Thus, within the artifact, there would be an illusory experience that could be articulated by the proposition: "I am a man, standing in a garden, seeing trees, hearing birds, feeling the Sun, remembering last summer and thinking about my mortgage." Some philosophical texts discuss whether such an artifact is possible. Poul Anderson's novel, Genesis, invites its readers to imagine not only that this hypothetical artifact is possible but also that it will have been constructed in a remote future.

Consciousness involves a subject and objects, which are not necessarily material objects. (Thus, an abstraction can be an object of thought.) I, a subject, see a tree, an object. I am also aware of myself. Thus, the self is both a subject and an object. A man is an organic subject of consciousness whereas some process within the hypothetical artifact is an inorganic subject.

It seems to the organic subject that he sees a tree because he is in fact seeing a tree. Thus, the circumlocution, "It seems to...," becomes redundant. However, it seems to the inorganic subject that he sees a tree although he is not seeing a tree. The tree that he thinks he sees is not real. But he is a subject and is really seeing green, feeling a tree trunk etc. Thus, he has real experiences of an unreal world. He is real although his perceived environment is not.