The World of Screen Creatures

Liu, Bin

Volume 18 · Number 3 · Pages 387–396

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The World of Screen Creatures

Bin Liu

Abstract

Context: Some scholars have put forward constructivist world models in which the purported external world is constructed from experience (i.e., there is a constructive relation between them. However, scholars disagree about whether experience is generated by the brain and results from the perception of the purported external world (i.e., whether there are generative relations and perceptual relations. Problem: Do we need to maintain perceptual relations or generative relations in a constructivist world model? Method: I propose a world model where our world is composed of a large number of screen creatures, and this is compared with the world model in the irrealist virtual world theory. There is a constructive relation in both world models, but only the second world model contains generative and perceptual relations. I provide reasons to doubt that the world model in the irrealist virtual world theory can provide sufficient reasons for involving generative or perceptual relations. Results: We should accept the world model composed of screen creatures as the model of our world; we do not need to retain perceptual or generative relations in a constructivist world model. Implications: This article points out that perceptual relations stem from a misunderstanding of certain correlations between experiences. This will generate some new ideas when considering the mind-matter problem. Constructivist content: This article discusses how to deal with generative and perceptual relations using constructivist world models.

Key words: Conscious experience, constructivism, mind-matter problem, irrealism, representationalism, the hard problem, virtual world theory.

Citation

Liu B. (2023) The world of screen creatures. Constructivist Foundations 18(3): 387–396. https://constructivist.info/18/3/387

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