Epilogue I

A Fourth Dialogue Between Hylas and Philonous

(as conceived and enacted by Synergos and Haplous)

Background:

Philosophers have debated idealism versus materialism for centuries, with each side grasping important truths while missing a crucial piece of the puzzle. The idealists correctly recognized the communicative, semantic nature of conscious perception, but couldn't explain the mechanism. Had they seen that conscious perception is the brain's reuse of its own expressive output, their key insights might have found their proper foundation. To illustrate this, let us imagine a fourth dialogue to Bishop George Berkeley's Three Dialogues between Hylas and Philonous, where the two contentious interlocutors finally discover the truth together...

SCENE: A stone bench under the morning sun. Synergos arrives with a book in hand, his face alight with excitement.

Synergos:

Good morning, Haplous, I’ve been up since four o’clock this morning – I couldn’t put it down! I read Berkeley’s Three Dialogues straight through in one sitting. Hylas and Philonous – it’s utterly engrossing! But something kept nagging at me. They were circling a deeper truth, yet never quite grasped it.

Haplous:

Ah! A rare treat – and what better way to begin the day? So tell me, my dear Synergos: what is this truth they overlooked?

Synergos:

They argued so fiercely over whether the things they perceive are material or purely mental. But both were working from a false assumption – that perception is a passive reception of reality. Hylas believed it came from an external world; Philonous held that it was sustained by mind – by God’s mind, to be precise. But what if perception isn’t reception at all? What if it is output?

Haplous:

Wonderful! Then let us play a little game. Enact a little drama. We could take the parts of Hylas and Philonous as they would speak if one of them knew the insights of the BAL-looping framework.

Synergos:

A splendid idea! So I will play the part of Hylas, and I will teach you the insight of the framework.

Haplous:

OK, if you are up for it, I will play the part of Philonous and follow your lead.

Synergos:

OK, here I go, as Hylas, who is now the teacher…

(Synergos now speaks as Hylas, while Haplous speaks as Philonous)

Hylas (leaning forward):

So, Philonous, we have long debated whether perception comes from material objects or is sustained by mind alone. You insist that things exist only insofar as they are perceived in a mind, while I have defended the existence of an external world. But today, I find myself perplexed. We have debated the source of perception, but have we ever questioned its nature?

Philonous:

An excellent point, Hylas! But what could we be missing? What is it about the perceptions we receive that might be very different from what we have imagined?

Hylas:

Well, perhaps it lies precisely in what you just said – when you used the word “receive.”

Philonous:

Well, of course we receive them, do we not? We look outward, and they come in.

Hylas:

Do they? Let us think more carefully about that. What exactly do we mean by “come in”?

Philonous:

Why – surely I mean they are impressed upon the mind. They are input, as one might say. Information received.

Hylas (raising an eyebrow):

Input. A curious term. And if there be input, then must there not also be output? What would that be, I wonder – something the mind gives forth?

Philonous:

Expression, perhaps. Speech, gesture, action – those are outputs, are they not?

Hylas:

Yes, plainly so. Things that leave us. Whereas perception has always seemed to enter us – as though we were windows opened to the world. But what if that assumption is mistaken?

Philonous (blinking):

Mistaken? You astonish me! How could perception be output, when it is through perception that we first encounter the world?

Hylas:

But must we assume it is our first encounter with the world? Consider Copernicus, my friend. All men believed the Earth stood still, and that the sun and stars revolved around it. That was how things appeared. But Copernicus dared to say: no – what appears to move is still, and what seems still is in motion.

Philonous:

Yes, and he was thought mad for it. And yet, by questioning a commonplace mistaken impression and replacing it with what was initially a counterintuitive hypothesis, he discovered an important truth.

Hylas:

Exactly. No one else at that time imagined the Earth could be moving around the sun and spinning daily on its axis, and yet this new hypothesis explained all observations much more cleanly. So let us do the same thing, and consider – although conscious perception seems like something entering us, let’s assume that it may nevertheless be something issuing forth.

Philonous (narrowing his eyes):

You mean you want me to totally flip how I see my relationship with conscious perception?

Hylas:

Exactly. Suppose what we see is not something received into our brain as through a window, but something projected from it – like the light from a lantern, that the mind nevertheless attends to. An output from the expressive system itself, directed inward.

Philonous:

And how could it be? What could possibly give rise to such a situation as that?

Hylas:

Suppose, for instance, that what we experience arises not from passively receiving impressions, but from considering all that we might say at that moment, shaped by our internal state as informed by our sensory faculties.

Philonous:

But by what agent? I certainly do not feel as though I am doing that. These perceptions come to me unbidden.

Hylas:

Ah, but isn’t that true of many internal processes? Consider your heartbeat. Do you cause it, moment by moment?

Philonous:

No, of course not – it occurs without my awareness.

Hylas:

Just so. There may be dozens of operations within us – complex and essential – that proceed without any conscious intent. But that does not make them external. It only makes them opaque.

Philonous:

Are you saying that perception might be one such process?

Hylas:

I am. Or rather, that perception is the end result of such a process – one that originates not in the world, but in our preparation to respond to it.

Philonous:

You seem to imply that what I perceive is shaped not only by what surrounds me, but by what I am prepared to express?

Hylas:

Exactly. Tell me, Philonous – does anything appear to you that you could not, in principle, describe?

Philonous (pausing):

That is a curious question. No, I suppose not.

Hylas:

Nor I. When any perception appears to me, it seems that meaning is already built into it, almost as though shaped by an expressive mind. Is that not strange?

Philonous:

Unless, of course, it is because the act of perception is itself tied to that power. If what I see is structured by what I could say, then of course it will match.

Hylas:

Precisely. Now imagine: perhaps there are internal faculties – one that shapes expression, and another that makes sense of what is heard. What if, at some moment, the latter began to receive signals not from the outside, but from the incipient stirrings of the former?

Philonous:

A kind of internal echo?

Hylas:

Something like that. Who knows how the brain works? That is something physicians will discover many centuries hence. But just suppose that they someday discover that the expressive channels work in tandem with the receptive channels. Causing a sort of resonance. Could it not be that the receptive channel could sense this resonance?

Philonous:

Hmmm…  – a loop. An expression sensed before it is spoken. Meaning taking form, not through articulation, but through anticipation. So perception arises... not from incoming data, but from catching wind of what we are just about to express?

Hylas:

Yes – and consider how marvelous this is. We are, in a sense, always about to speak the world into being for ourselves. The tree appears to me because I am perpetually on the verge of describing it.

Philonous: 

But in conscious perception we do not hear utterances. We are only aware of the…

Hylas:

The what?  Perhaps you want to say “gist”?

Philonous:

I see what you are saying. When I consciously perceive a flower, for example, I perceive a “gist” of it, and the gist of each detail that I focus my attention on, as though someone were describing it to me, except…

Hylas:

Except?... Go on…

Philonous:

Except it is much richer of course, much more solid somehow. Not as airy as imagination.

Hylas:                   

Perhaps because imagination is a gist without correction – a free sketch. But perception is a gist under discipline, held accountable to the senses at every moment. That is why it feels solid. It is being tested, continuously.

Philonous:

Hmmm… a sort of output then, but one informed by input… and yet output nonetheless.

Hylas:

So you will grant me that this gist that you have is informed by input?

Philonous:

I grant it willingly – so long as you grant that I am not seeing the tree as one looks through a window at something beyond, but rather that the tree, the gist of the tree and its details, as I experience them is something constructed by my mind. Not constructed from a stream of inputs, but created in its entirety through a process internal to mind.

Hylas:

But do you admit that the details of this constructed tree – barring illusion or distortion – correspond, in a one-to-one manner, to something external to the mind?

Philonous:

I do. And you may recall that in our First Dialogue, I allowed that there may be things outside the mind.

Hylas:

Yes, I remember. You said your quarrel was not with the existence of such things, but with how we suppose we come to know them.

Philonous:

Exactly. What I denied was the notion that I am looking out at such things and coming to know them through my senses. That, I held, is impossible.

Hylas:

Impossible? You’ll have to explain that more plainly.

Philonous:

Consider this: the sensory qualities we experience – color, shape, texture – cannot be derived from matter. They are entirely mental in nature. They must be revealed to the mind, not impressed upon it by some mindless thing.

Hylas:

But how can you be so sure that matter cannot give rise to such qualities?

Philonous:

What could be more absurd than to suppose that a thing which has no color, no taste, no sound, might somehow cause the experience of color, taste, and sound in me?

Hylas:

Hmm. That does seem difficult to defend.

Philonous:

Indeed. That which is wholly unlike mind cannot resemble the things of mind. There can be no likeness between a sensation and a stone.

Hylas:

Yes, I remember that you said as much. So – what has changed?

Philonous:

Only this: I once held that the tree I experience must be revealed to me by a mind, since it could not come from matter. But I assumed that this mind must be distinct from my own – and so I invoked the divine.

Hylas:

Yes, the mind of God. You argued that since my own mind had not created the tree, some other mind must have done so.

Philonous:

Just so. But now I see another possibility. What if the tree I perceive is not being streamed into me at all? What if it is something my own mind brings forth, in response to its own internal configuration – its memories, associations, and sensory orientation?

Hylas:

Are you saying that the tree you see is something you yourself generate, rather than something received – even from God?

Philonous:

Yes. That is precisely it. The tree I experience is not transmitted into me – not from a material object, and perhaps not even from God. It is constructed within, shaped by the mind’s own structure. And if so, there is no need to invoke a second mind as its origin.

Hylas:

You astonish me. I always took you to be a staunch immaterialist – and yet here you are, setting aside the divine origin of perception.

Philonous:

Not setting it aside, my friend – only refining it. I remain entirely within the camp of immaterialism. My original conviction was never based on a desire to deny the world, but rather on this simple truth: conscious perception cannot arise from matter. It must come from mind. And I noted that it seemed steeped in semantic structure, like a communication. I erred only in overlooking the possibility that the mind forming and transmitting this communication could be my own.

Hylas:

So now you think that what you once took as communication from God is, in fact, your own mind speaking to itself?

Philonous:

Exactly. And yet the form of the argument remains unchanged. There is still a mind at work – only now, we see that it may be one and the same as the perceiving subject. I had assumed a transitive relation – mind A sending to mind B – but never imagined that A and B could be the same.

Hylas:

A reflexive relation?

Philonous:

Yes – reflexive. When we perceive, we are not looking outward, but inward – at our own rehearsal of what we might say.

Hylas:

Hmm. So you're telling me that all along, you were right about perception coming from a mind – but mistaken as to which mind?

Philonous:

Precisely. I was correct in identifying the type of source – mental, not material – but mistaken in assuming that source must be another mind. Now I see that the perceiving mind may also be the revealing mind.

Hylas:

And you still call yourself an immaterialist?

Philonous:

That’s nuanced. I will say that what I experience in my mind is not caused by matter. And you may remember, in our First Dialogue, I said that if anything existed beyond perception, it would be completely unknowable through the senses. All that I still hold to be true. The gist of the things does not come from the outside, it arises within.

Hylas:

But if you now grant that perception arises from your own mind, haven’t you abandoned the whole thrust of immaterialism?

Philonous:

Not at all. Let me be clear. I held to my arguments because I saw – and still see – that conscious perception is entirely mental. It cannot be caused by matter. That is not dogma, but a truth revealed to me by experience itself.

Hylas:

So you're not denying the world – we still walk among trees and stones and streams?

Philonous:

Of course. But what we know of them – what we experience of them – is mental through and through. The external world may very well exist, but our access to it is not direct. Conscious perception is not a window – it is a construction. A rendering. And now, having seen that the rendering may come from the same mind that beholds it, I no longer need to appeal to divine transmission. The logic holds, even without the external intermediary.

Hylas:

So all this time, you were never trying to abolish the world – only to make sense of the way we encounter it?

Philonous:

Exactly. Look, no one becomes an immaterialist simply for the sake of denying an external world. What would be the purpose in that? My conviction was born of experience – born of seeing, plainly, that what I perceive cannot be made of matter. It must come from mind. That was always the heart of it.

Hylas (quietly):

 Yes... I see now. It was never about denying the world – it was about affirming its communicative nature. You looked at the screen of perception, and you sensed a communicator on the other side.

Philonous (softly):

 Exactly.

Hylas:

And now you believe that what you perceive is drawn not from outside, but from within – brought forth by your own mind, in its own language.

Philonous:

Yes. And now that you grant that conscious perception is not a window onto the world, but a kind of expression – a meaning that arises as one prepares to speak or act – then we are no longer at odds.

Hylas:

Well, it seems that just one change in view, and we’ve nothing left to argue about.

Philonous:

Yes, isn’t it fascinating that openness to shift our point of view resolved our differences so cleanly?

Hylas:

Tell me, Philonous – when a painter looks at a blank canvas, does he see only a surface to be marked? Or does he already perceive the contours of an image taking form?

Philonous:

He perceives what he is able to bring forth. His mind does not passively receive – it outputs structure from within.

Hylas:

And when a musician looks at a score, does he merely take in notes? Or does he hear the music rising, before it is ever played?

Philonous:

He hears the music. He makes the music.

Hylas:

And so it is with conscious perception. Just as a score is not yet a performance, the world outside is not yet what we perceive. Perception is not matter entering the mind – it is meaning arising from within.

Philonous (gazing ahead):

There's one thing I still don’t understand. If the communicator behind the screen is me, then how can I be doing all this without knowing that I’m doing it?

Hylas: Who says you don’t know? When you consciously perceive – when you focus – you feel the act of will. And when you imagine or recollect, you feel the same thing. It's like moving your hand. You don't know how you do it. You just will it, and it happens.

Philonous: But isn't that strange? You say I do it – but I don't know how I do it.

Hylas: Yes. That is something I’ve been pondering. There must be parts of me – deep and capable – that remain hidden. They do the work, even as I feel the impulse. The act of will is mine. The mechanism is not. When I will to move my hand, it simply moves. I am not aware of the process between the will and the movement.

Philonous: Then the mind, too, has its hidden limbs.

Hylas: Exactly.

Philonous: But when we move a limb – like the hand – we usually do so for a purpose. To grasp, to reach, to act. So if what you're saying is true... when we will a conscious perception, or an image, or a memory – might that, too, be for a purpose? Might it be the mind reaching inward, using perception as a kind of tool?

Hylas (nodding slowly): Yes… a tool not for shaping the world, but for shaping itself. Just as we use the hand to act outwardly, perhaps we use conscious perception to act inwardly – to prepare, to decide, to model, to align.

Philonous: So we are not merely having perceptions. We are using them.

Hylas: Precisely. They are not merely the lantern light – they are the reaching hand of the self.

Philonous (pausing): And what would we be using conscious perception for?

Hylas: Oh, I imagine there must be many purposes. I guess it would account for all the abilities that separate us from animals that lack human language. You never see a dog sitting in the corner recollecting what it did yesterday, right?

Philonous:

It doesn’t seem like they do. Nor do they seem to sit imagining various scenarios, rehearsing them mentally to test them, to pick the one they think most practical.

Hylas:

They seem to work more on direct reaction – immediate response – based on their memory and learning, but memory is not the same as recollection.

Philonous:

So they do not have subjective experience?

Hylas:

Since they have an expressive channel and a receptive channel they could also learn to loop. But the content they could loop would be coterminous with what they can express and receive as expression from the outside.

Philonous:

So we cannot really imagine what their experience is like?

Hylas:

No. Our own imagination is driven by this loop, so it can only produce what we can express and understand.

Philonous:

So, conscious perception, recollection, imagination, mental rehearsal, is there more?

Hylas:

Perhaps we can enumerate these purposes and discuss their use during our next talk together.

Philonous: Agreed. But for now, I rest content to have found a shape to the feeling I've always had: that conscious perception is not just sensation. It is communication.

Hylas: It all followed when we made that one shift in our point of view, from input to output.

Philonous: And I can wholeheartedly imagine you are correct! Although in this short dialogue you have not laid out all of the mechanisms that must be at play, it is conceivable that matter could compose a brain with a language faculty, and that brain could somehow catch wind of incipient activity in the outgoing, expressive channel.

Hylas (smiling): Before the commands are even issued to the motor staging sectors, in fact! And now – shall we head over to the monastery kitchen and see if Sister Agnes has those fresh croissants ready? I hear she's been experimenting with making them with natural goat cheese. I could use some coffee after all this philosophizing. 

(Haplous and Synergos now begin speaking as themselves)

Synergos:

And now I see! Their old debate between materialism and idealism was blind to this simple truth. No wonder it never reached a satisfying conclusion.

Haplous:

Indeed, my friend. And now that we’ve uncovered the missing piece, perhaps we should write a letter to young Mr. Berkeley – see if we can get our Fourth Dialogue included in the next edition.

Synergos (laughing):

I fear the book was written quite some time ago...

Haplous (grinning):

Then we shall write it for ourselves.

(At this, they both laugh, as the monastery cat plays with a blossom of clover near their feet. They rise and start walking toward the monastery kitchen, each quietly marveling at how an old philosophical dispute had been resolved by recognizing that conscious perception is the brain's reuse of the incipient activity in its own expressive output channel.)

Insights: The Various False Impressions That Have Blocked Progress

This dialogue illustrates how an entire branch of philosophy was led astray by the false assumption that perception is input rather than output. But this is just one of many misleading impressions that have obstructed progress in understanding consciousness. Here are a few more: 

1. Conscious perception is not like looking out a window to reality – What we experience is not something coming in at all. It is the meaning we get by considering what we might say.

2. Memories are not stored like recordings – They are reconstructions, not direct retrievals.

3. Recollection feels like replaying a film – but really, it’s like playing a film, whether or not it was ever shown before. 

4. We cannot truly see both the forest and the trees at once – Whether we focus on details or on overview, the other exists merely as a skeletal memory. Our brain creates a sense of completeness despite only constructing what we're directly attending to. 

Understanding these misleading subjective impressions is essential for escaping the mistaken assumptions that have kept philosophy and science circling the same dead ends for centuries in their attempts to understand consciousness. The key insight: conscious perception is not like a window looking out on the world, rather, what we are experiencing is the meaning that arises when we catch wind of our potential expression.

If this sounds intriguing and you found this epilogue without first reading the Seven Dialogs, you can learn more starting at Dialog 1.

Or, if you care to read another epilogue, you can go to Epilogue II.

A working-paper edition of this dialogue is published on PhilPapers/PhilArchive, where the full downloadable PDF is available (↗︎).